


morpheus

by iceblinks



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dreamscapes, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Timeskip, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved, atsumu yearns: the fic, author did not use sakusa as a figurative punching bag, miya atsumu's internal monologue, msby era, mutual pining told exclusively through introspection and hand holding, past one-sided atsumu/kita, resolved emotional tension, the excruciatingly slow clowning of sakusa kiyoomi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25755274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceblinks/pseuds/iceblinks
Summary: “Miya Atsumu,” Dream-Omi says. He does not drop Atsumu’s hand; rather, he brings it to eye level and traces his thumb curiously along Atsumu’s knuckles. “You always come back different. Have you grown another skin?”“The fuck do ya mean, another skin,” Atsumu says, jerking away.“Another layer,” Omi clarifies. He blinks down at Atsumu, lashes brushing his pale cheeks. He reaches out to take Atsumu’s hand again and laces their fingers together. “The epidermis recreates itself completely every twenty-seven days. You are not the same person you were last month.”A big fat jerk and a too-blunt jerk navigate the pitfalls of intimacy.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 62
Kudos: 303
Collections: ~SakuAtsu~





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you want?

Atsumu has always been a vivid dreamer. It’s fascinating, he thinks, to be able to walk the line between reality and fantasy. His reality is volleyball, and it reflects in his dreams; but, once conceptualized, it can turn into something different entirely. Atsumu once dreamed of the volleyball net pulling him up like a fish out of water, and the harder he struggled, the tighter it wound around him. Finally, Kita-san had come back for one last check around the gym. Upon seeing Atsumu half-strangled in twine, he had pulled a large pair of gardening shears out of his track jacket, cutting him free in a matter of seconds. When Atsumu looked up, Kita-san had transformed into Itachiyama’s Sakusa Kiyoomi, who stared him down with soulless black eyes until the court disappeared beneath their feet. 

All these years later and Sakusa still inhabits his dreams in the way a cockroach inhabits a forgotten pantry corner. (Sakusa would take great offense at being compared to a cockroach.) Even in Atsumu’s dreams, he will appear wearing a flu mask and latex gloves. Atsumu’s half-forgotten how the curve of Sakusa’s mouth looks beneath it. 

Atsumu knows he probably dreams about Sakusa more than is normal. It’s not like he dreams of Shouyou or Bokuto or Meian on a daily basis. They don’t appear in the middle of the night to spritz hand sanitizer onto his calloused hands and whisper in his ear, “You disgust me, Atsumu.”

Despite this, Sakusa and Dream Omi-kun are very different people. This is exempting the obvious; Real Sakusa is very unlikely to sprout glowing wings and grab Atsumu around the collar as he rises above the clouds. Real Sakusa is equally as unlikely to kiss him as they ascend past the atmosphere, into orbit. Real Sakusa would not breathe air into Atsumu’s dying lungs, would not step barefoot through ten meters of muddy marsh water if it meant Atsumu’s safety. These situations are, of course, incredibly specific, and Atsumu has asked Real Sakusa about them on several occasions. Sakusa has always replied: “It’s your head, Miya.”

“What’s your angle, Omi-Omi?” Atsumu had said once. It was after a loss, a practice match against a team he’d already forgotten the names and faces of. Sakusa had spent twenty minutes in the shower; Atsumu had waited. 

Sakusa had paused in pulling on a puffy down jacket to look down his nose at him. His hair was still half-wet from the shower, beads of water dripping from the very tips of his curls. “There is no angle, Miya. Go home.”

“There’s always an angle,” Atsumu had said petulantly, and Sakusa had glared until his jacket was zipped up to his chin. 

Atsumu is not entirely sure of Dream-Omi’s angle. Confusion. Delusion. Maybe Sakusa was right—there is no angle. Maybe Atsumu is just a boy who sleeps alone in his unfurnished Hirakata apartment and wishes someone was there to hold him while the winds rattle his window panes. 

Real Sakusa would never indulge his gratuitous fantasies. But Dream-Omi runs a long finger slowly down Atsumu’s jaw and whispers, “Miya. I am going to fuck you _blind.”_

(Atsumu wakes up gasping, sheets soaked with sweat, and snorts. Right. He cannot imagine Real Sakusa willingly engaging in any form of sexual relations. He’d probably wear those stupid blue latex gloves the whole damn time. Atsumu would have to kiss him through a disposable flu mask. 

Maybe sex is like exposure therapy. Maybe if Sakusa just went around fucking a different person every week, he’d have no trouble adding Atsumu to the list.)

Tonight, Dream-Omi visits him in the form of a futuristic cyborg. His hinged limbs are plastic and metal and his cool touch sets Atsumu aflame. He takes him by the hand and leads him through a series of doors; when they finally stop in a pure white, completely unfurnished room, an airlock hisses shut behind them. Omi’s eyes are on him again. 

“Miya,” he says wonderingly, running his flesh hand down Atsumu’s arm. It comes to rest under his elbow. “So this is what it means to be human.”

“What now?” He says stupidly. Omi’s jaw is plated metal and his hair is straight. The hair bothers Atsumu more than the plating. Two small notches sit just above his jaw, mirroring the moles above his eyebrow. 

“What do you want, Miya Atsumu?” Omi-the-cyborg asks, moving closer. His hands wrap around Atsumu’s forearms, pulling him close. He smells like disinfectant. He smells like he’s shoved an entire goddamn hospital into his back pocket. Like he does six shots of hand sanitizer before bed every night. 

“I dunno,” Atsumu answers honestly. “You, I guess. Any way I can have ya.”

“Desperate.” The plastic-and-metal hand comes up to brush Atsumu’s overgrown bangs out of his eyes. Atsumu’s skin chills. Dream-Omi can be cruel, too. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am, kinda.” Atsumu makes a weak fist and knocks against Sakusa’s chest. The sound is hollow. “Feels so fuckin’ demeaning, yanno? Every time I see ya.”

“You see me often,” Omi-the-cyborg says. It is not a question. Dream-Omi has gained sentience. He evolves with every second he spends inside of Atsumu’s brain, has built himself a body out of gray matter and a soul with the bare skeleton of what Atsumu understands to be Sakusa’s. 

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Atsumu frowns. “I dunno.”

“Miya,” Omi-the-cyborg starts, eyes bright, and then he bursts into flame. His hair burns red-hot and suddenly the scene changes and it’s snowing; they’re surrounded by ten-foot walls of ice and Omi’s hair falls off in charred clumps. What’s left of it coils into thick curls. Atsumu steps forward and runs his hand through it, and Dream-Omi lets him. 

“Miya,” he tries again, “you don’t need to worry. You have me.”

Atsumu pauses. His hand is covered in ash when he pulls it away from Dream-Omi’s hair. He watches as the ash turns to glitter dust on his palms and floats up, up, up above their heads. The snow is iridescent. “You aren’t Omi-Omi, though.”

“I’m good enough,” Dream-Omi says, wrapping an arm around his waist, and Atsumu wants to cry because he’s right, he’s right, of _course_ he’s right. 

* * *

Practice is hell on earth after he wakes up with the memory of Omi-the-cyborg pressed against him. His sets are off. The ball slips from his sweat-slick fingers. Even _Bokuto_ notices something’s wrong. 

“What, Miya,” Sakusa says flatly. He’s cornered Atsumu in the locker room, staring him down with that piercing gaze as Atsumu pulls on his faded sweatshirt. Atsumu can smell the two-in-one shampoo Sakusa uses. One of his hands rests against Atsumu’s locker. 

“Whaddya mean, what?” He’s stalling. The last person he wants to confront him about today is Sakusa. 

Sakusa is many things, but dumb is not one of them. He’d gone to college, after all, while the rest of them had let their palms grow firm and calloused over ten thousand spiked volleyballs. He probably spends his free time masterminding billion-yen corporations and discussing the economic recession over tea and cookies. What did he even go to college _for?_

“Miya,” he says coldly, “your performance today was beyond poor. Whatever the hell’s going on with you has no place on the court.”

“Dang, Omi-kun, you really know what to tell a guy,” Atsumu says, pulling at the bottom of his sweatshirt. A loose red thread dangles from the hem. His lips are dry. 

“I trust it won’t happen again?” 

Atsumu stares. 

“I can’t make any promises,” he says.

“This is your _career,_ idiot,” Sakusa says, leaning down. “This isn’t high school. You’re not always going to have a chance to play. There are people waiting for you to make one misstep— _just one—_ so that they can take your place.”

“Pretty fuckin’ cynical way to put it, don’tcha think?” He says, tone light. Atsumu is nothing but false bravado. He wants to stick his head in the sand. He wants to lay down like an ostrich until the danger passes him by.

“That’s life for you, Miya.” Sakusa glares down at him. “Not everyone gets to be the star of the show.”

“That why ya went to college, Omi-Omi? Insurance?” Frustration is setting in. He just wants to _leave,_ wants to go home and make himself a cup of black tea and stare at the cracks in his ceiling instead of sleeping. He adjusts the collar of his sweatshirt, shoving the tag down. Sakusa is complicating a lot of things today. 

“Fuck off.” Sakusa’s teeth are gritted when he spits, “You know as well as I do that this won’t last forever.”

Atsumu is not a realist. He dreams and dreams until his metaphorical thought bubble hits the ceiling fan and knocks dust into his eyes. Retirement is the elephant in his bedroom, and he’s thrown an ugly shag rug over it as if it’ll be less noticeable this way. He has given thirty-five-year-old Miya Atsumu no thought. 

Sakusa, apparently, has been thinking years ahead of him. He’ll probably be masterminding billion-yen corporations for a living at thirty-five. Maybe he’ll meet up with Osamu and discuss venture capital over tiny sandwiches. Maybe Onigiri Miya will be a billion-yen corporation over which Sakusa and Osamu will both hold the reins of, and Atsumu will be looked down upon as the son who bestowed only a brief moment of pride and honor upon the Miya name. In the wake of Atsumu’s inevitable retirement, Osamu will cement his place as the superior brother. 

“Sorry about today. It won’t happen again.” Atsumu stands up, batting Sakusa’s arm away. Sakusa steps back. “I’m goin’ home. G’night, Omi-kun.”

“Miya.”

Atsumu stops in the doorway. 

“Best of luck with your problem,” Sakusa says, sounding as though the words have been wrung out of him through brute force. He does not meet Atsumu’s eyes across the room. 

“Thanks, I guess,” Atsumu says carefully. He feels a little guilty. It’s not Sakusa’s fault, he reasons with himself. Sakusa hadn’t made the conscious decision to start wrecking his life while he’s not even awake. “G’night, then.”

“Goodnight, Miya.”

* * *

Dream-Omi sticks Atsumu’s right hand in an industrial-strength blender and presses _start._

* * *

“Hey, Omi-kun. Wanna hear about the dream I had last night?”

“Not particularly.”

It’s a Friday night, and the team has managed to drag Sakusa with them to the izakaya a few blocks away from their gym. He looks annoyed, sort of bored, glancing down at his phone every now and then. He and Atsumu are sitting next to each other, pressed thigh-to-thigh. Atsumu doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“You were in it,” he says anyway. He takes a sip of his beer, head already pleasantly fuzzy. “The team was havin’ a party at Shouyou’s house, and one thing led to another and you guys ended up shoving me into the washing machine as a dare. And it’s a little fuzzy, but I think my old high school captain Kita-san was there to press the power button?”

“Where do I factor into this,” Sakusa says flatly. It is not a question. Sakusa does not ask questions; he demands answers. 

“Well, I was spinning around and the machine was filling up with water, right? But then it turned into a tunnel and so I crawled through it and there you were on the other side! Weird, huh?”

Atsumu has left a few choice details out of the story. How Dream-Omi had been perched on the edge of Atsumu’s childhood bed, fists clutching the dinosaur-patterned blankets. How Atsumu had slipped his own hand over one of Omi’s. How he’d kissed Omi, and Omi had kissed him back. 

There is a long pause, during which Atsumu takes another sip of beer and Sakusa stares, unimpressed. 

“That’s it.”

“Yeah?” He says, uncertain. 

Sakusa raises his left shoulder, and it bumps against Atsumu’s. “Seems awfully dull.”

“Omi-kun, you _asshole,”_ Atsumu says. He reaches over to pluck a piece of meat off of Sakusa’s plate. “It’s not like I can control my dreams. This isn’t _Inception.”_

Sakusa looks him dead in the eye and says, “I have full control of my dreams.”

“What the _fuck?”_

* * *

It’s called lucid dreaming. 

“It’s called lucid dreaming,” Sakusa says, looking entirely unenthusiastic. Atsumu has stopped him in the gym lobby after practice the next day, hair still dripping wet from the shower. “I have full self-awareness within my dreams. I can influence how they play out or create entirely new ones.”

“You ever just sit down and watch ‘em play out?”

“Of course I do,” Sakusa says. “Conscious dreaming takes work, after all. It’s important to let your brain rest with your body.”

“That sounds _wild,”_ Atsumu says. “If I could do that, I’d just stay in bed all day. Might beat out even volleyball.”

“Phrasing,” Sakusa says pointedly.

“What?” He grins. “Don’tcha wanna get in bed with me?”

“Christ,” Sakusa says, and Atsumu delights in the way the tips of his ears go pink. Mentally, he bemoans Sakusa’s ever-present flu mask; he’s sure his face is just as flushed. “Are you going to block the door forever? People are trying to leave, you know.” 

“Such a prude, Omi-Omi,” Atsumu huffs, pushing the door open. He’s halfway through when he realizes Sakusa hasn’t followed him out. He’s still standing in the doorway when Atsumu holds the door and gestures for him to walk through. “Omi-kun?” 

“I don’t know what gave you that impression, Miya,” Sakusa says quietly, eyes glinting, “but I think you would be pleasantly surprised if you and I were ever to get into bed.” 

He brushes past Atsumu, hiking his bag up on his shoulder. Atsumu can smell his gross two-in-one shampoo. 

“What the _hell,_ Omi-kun,” he yells after Sakusa, and receives some nasty looks and shushes from passersby. He lets go of the door and bolts, grabbing Sakusa by the shoulder. “What was that, an invitation?” 

“Miya,” Sakusa says, pushing Atsumu’s hand off, “either go back and dry off properly or go home before you get sick.” 

“I wanna hear about your loopy dreaming—“

_“Lucid—“_

“—yeah, whatever, and the details of yer proposition.” He grins, all teeth. “You _are_ propositioning me, ain’tcha?”

Sakusa fixes Atsumu with his best derisive stare. Atsumu does not give in. Years of competing with Osamu have shaped his personality in such a way that he now finds himself near unable to back down from a challenge once it has been posed. For this he blames not Osamu, but his father; for encouraging and perpetuating their childhood rivalry, adult Atsumu and Osamu now communicate mainly through dissonance. A slip of the tongue, a _no-takebacks,_ a pinky promise—things have changed in fifteen years, yes, but at his core, Atsumu is the same boy he was at age eight. 

Finally, Sakusa breaks eye contact to unzip his gym bag and rifle through its contents. He pulls out a towel, cream-colored and neatly folded, and holds it out to Atsumu. His expression is unreadable beneath the mask. 

“You’ll catch a cold,” he says simply. 

“You can’t catch a cold just ‘cuz it’s a little chilly out,” Atsumu says, but he takes the towel anyway. It’s coarser than the one he uses and smells faintly of coconut. For a moment, he considers his own towel, shoved deep into the bag he’s slung over his own shoulder. He wonders if Sakusa is thinking of it, too. 

* * *

Dream-Omi visits him that night in an ethereal landscape where butterflies cluster on trees that look like rock candy. Everything is tinted pastel except for Atsumu’s clothing, which seems obnoxiously neon in comparison. There is justice in this, maybe. 

“I see you’ve arrived safely.”

Dream-Omi’s entrances are sometimes a thing of grandeur. He appears in a puff of smoke, or perhaps from the split-second flame of a handheld lighter. He sweeps into rooms draped in cirrus clouds made solid. He sprouts from the earth like the big oak tree from _Totoro._ If Atsumu dances, maybe Omi will sprout bigger, faster. 

Dream-Omi has not made an entrance this time. Atsumu had been deposited in this cotton-candy world to find Omi already staring down at him, five meters taller than usual. Atsumu watches as Omi shrinks down into himself until he’s reached a normal height. He extends a hand, and Atsumu takes it. Omi’s palms are ice-cold. 

“Miya Atsumu,” Dream-Omi says. He does not drop Atsumu’s hand; rather, he brings it to eye level and traces his thumb curiously along Atsumu’s knuckles. “You always come back different. Have you grown another skin?”

“The fuck do ya mean, another skin,” Atsumu says, jerking away.

“Another layer,” Omi clarifies. He blinks down at Atsumu, lashes brushing his pale cheeks. He reaches out to take Atsumu’s hand again and laces their fingers together. “The epidermis recreates itself completely every twenty-seven days. You are not the same person you were last month.”

“Thank god,” Atsumu says. “I popped a semi in the locker room a few weeks ago and I’m pretty sure Bokkun saw it.”

The way Dream-Omi and Sakusa wrinkle their noses is, obviously, identical. Atsumu feels the same combination of amusement and disappointment no matter which version of Sakusa it appears on.

“Miya,” Dream-Omi says, and he creates a silvery pathway in front of them with a flick of his left hand. He tugs Atsumu forward, and then they’re walking together. The rock-candy trees and pastel butterflies disappear around them. The sky turns aquamarine. “There is something I should show you. We don’t have much time.”

Tonight’s version of Dream-Omi is mysterious, well-spoken, and demanding. Atsumu doesn’t like it. There is something decidedly _off_ about him in the first place, but as the sky turns darker the further they go down the silver path, the back of Atsumu’s neck prickles. 

“Can’t we just fuck or something?” He says desperately. Their twin footsteps, perfectly in sync, make muffled _thuds_ against the path. Atsumu decides it must be made of glass.

“Is sex the only thing on your brain besides volleyball, Miya? How have you not burnt out yet?” This is the most Sakusa-sounding thing Dream-Omi has said today. Dream-Omi seems to exist in a state of permanent cognitive dissonance, and every day he strays further from his blueprint. Atsumu is settling. The sky deepens to a muddy gray.

“Omi-kun,” he says, “can we go back?”

“No,” Omi says, and the shadow of Sakusa is gone again. “No, I don’t think so.”

* * *

Atsumu wakes up abruptly at two-thirty, gasping for air and clawing at his sweat-soaked sheets. It’s the first time in a while that he hasn’t stayed asleep for the whole night. 

* * *

The next week of practice is awful.

“Miya,” Sakusa says, and his voice has a dangerous edge to it. The walk to the locker room has never seemed longer. “I thought you weren’t going to let your personal life influence your career.”

 _Which are you?_ Atsumu wants to ask. _Business or personal? Because I keep having these dreams about not-you and I can’t look you in the eye anymore and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep when I get home._

“I’m _not,”_ he says instead, hating how whiny it sounds. He has not slept properly in almost a week. He’d had to smear concealer over his eye bags this morning. 

Sakusa raises an eyebrow. 

“Your performance has been consistently awful since last week. You show up to practice late and miss half the shots you take. Your sets are off. You look like you haven’t slept properly in days. Miya, whatever you’ve got going on, it had better resolve itself soon.”

“Is that a threat?” 

“I’m your teammate. I think I have a say in this, especially if it’s affecting the entire team dynamic.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, my coach?” Atsumu snaps.

“Foster’s noticed too,” Sakusa says, ever observant as per usual. He does not rise to the bait and Atsumu hates him for it. “He was watching you for the last half hour back there. You aren’t making a great case for yourself right now, Miya.”

“Shit,” Atsumu mumbles, running a hand through his hair. He grabs hold of the bleach-ruined tips and tugs, hard. 

Sakusa holds the door open for him. 

“So,” Atsumu says irritably, leading the way to their lockers. “You gonna ask me what my problem is?”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Oh.”

Sakusa is silent for a long moment, and then, with a sigh:

“What is it.”

“I can’t sleep,” Atsumu says immediately, which is perhaps the least troubling part of his entire ordeal. 

Sakusa sits down on the bench between their lockers and gestures for Atsumu to do the same. “What’s stopping you?” 

“I dunno, Omi-kun, it’s kinda embarrassing.” 

Sakusa gives him a sideways look. “You brought this up. Either spit it out or go take a shower.”

But he stays, hands clasped loosely between his knees. Atsumu stares down at his short, blunt fingernails. He’s cut them too close to the nail bed. Any shorter and they’ll end up bleeding over synthetic leather. He should take better care of them. He should be more careful with his clippers.

“Bad dreams,” he says eventually. “I think. Sometimes they’re bad and sometimes they’re not. They just...don’t feel right. I’ve been wakin’ up in the middle of the night.”

It feels stupid, childish, to admit this to Sakusa. This is blackmail material, surely. This will come back to bite him in the ass some five years from now, just as soon as he’s assumed Sakusa’s forgotten.

“It’s like I’ve got this sleep demon or somethin’, yanno, and it keeps coming back. So I haven’t been sleeping as well lately.”

“Sleep demon,” Sakusa says tonelessly.

“I— _yeah,”_ Atsumu says, feeling the tips of his ears warm, “kinda, and yer bein’ pretty damn rude about it! You’re the one who told me to—“

“I’m not mocking you.” Sakusa looks as grumpy as ever, but his words come out sounding sincere. 

Atsumu huffs out a laugh. “Kinda hard to tell, with your resting bitch face and all.” 

He regrets it the second he opens his mouth. Sakusa goes from somewhat indifferent to entirely pissed off in the span of a few short seconds. 

“That’s it,” Sakusa snaps, standing up, “I’ve had enough of this idiocy. I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Wait, Omi, I’m sorry, just please—“ He feels frantic, suddenly, with Sakusa’s back to him. “I’m sorry. Really. Just—gimme a sec.”

Sakusa sits back down, glowering impressively. 

“I dunno what’s goin’ on,” Atsumu says after a minute, glaring down at his hands. “I wanna get rid of the dreams, yanno? It’s creepy as fuck seein yer face in my—”

He stops short, eyes widening as his brain catches up to his mouth. He feels his cheeks flood with heat. Beside him, Sakusa has gone very still.

“Miya,” Sakusa says slowly. “Am I—”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we are _not_ discussing this,” Atsumu tells the tile floor, silently begging it to do him a favor and swallow him whole. He runs his hands through his hair and shoves his palms forcefully into his cheeks. Him and his stupid mouth. 

“Are you—”

“Shut up, Omi-kun, shut the _fuck_ up, I don’t wanna see your face for the next twenty-five years.” His voice is muffled through his hands. “Go move back to Tokyo. It’s, like, two and a half hours if you take the bullet train. You could be home by tonight.”

“Why are you dreaming about me?” Sakusa says, and he has the decency to sound at least a little embarrassed. When Atsumu finally looks up, he sees that the tips of Sakusa’s ears have gone pink. 

“I don’t fuckin’ know, Omi-kun, take a wild guess.” He did not wake up this morning intending on giving Sakusa the most half-assed confession of all time. He wants to die. Better yet, he wants to vanish off the face of the earth so that Osamu won’t be able to mock him from the grave. 

“I don’t know,” Sakusa says. His tone tells Atsumu that he definitely _does_ know. He won’t look Atsumu in the eye, and for some reason, it kind of pisses Atsumu off. 

“Look, I didn’t sign up for this, ya know,” Atsumu snaps, hating every word that comes out of his stupid, traitorous throat. “‘S not like they’re even good. You wanna know what I dreamed about last night? You sat me in a dentist’s chair and tore off all my fingernails, and then ya glued them to those stupid blue gloves and made me wear ‘em around.”

Sakusa finally looks at him, looking vaguely sick. “Miya, what the hell is wrong with your subconscious?”

“I’m tellin’ ya,” he sighs, slumping down on the bench. “And yer wonderin’ why I’ve been sleepin’ less.”

“I can imagine,” Sakusa says. His lips are pursed in a tight line. Atsumu wants to get the sudden visceral image of blue nitrile gloves out of his head. 

“Like, they were normal dreams at first, right?” He stretches his legs out until they hit the legs of the bench across from them. “And then suddenly you got weird and you weren’t really _you_ anymore and you started tellin’ me all this bullshit about how the epi-fuckin-whatever, yanno, the skin thing, regrows itself every month—”

“Epidermis?” Sakusa says immediately, and then he stops. “Oh.”

“Yeah, an’ ya took me down into the ocean and we had really killer sex but then you brought us up to the surface and started makin’ these square waves right out in the middle of nowhere. Creepy as fuck.” 

Atsumu takes a breath in and focuses on his staccato heartbeat. His face feels uncomfortably warm. He cracks his neck just to break the silence, relishing in the way it makes Sakusa flinch. “Sometimes I really hate how I remember everything afterward, yanno?”

“Am I a nightmare to you, Miya?”

Sakusa’s voice is quiet. He’s playing with his index finger, moving it up and down so that it forms the motion of a wave. Inexplicably, Atsumu thinks of childhood trips down to Takenohama Beach. Osamu had had that same habit of playing with his index finger back then, moving it back and forth and back and forth for what seemed like all eternity. Atsumu had made himself carsick watching him fidget.

“The hell d’ya mean?” He says, eyes on Sakusa’s hands. “You’re not the guy in my dreams anymore. I mean, he’s got your face and all, but he’s more of a wackjob than you could ever _hope_ to be.”

Sakusa doesn’t say anything. For a long moment, they just sit there, side-by-side, not talking. It’s too quiet. Atsumu feels like the whole world is listening when he swallows. 

“I really hate grid waves,” he finally says to a point just above Sakusa’s right shoulder. “They creep me out. They’re dangerous as fuck and they don’t look right. It’s like it goes against basic science, ‘cept I guess it doesn’t ‘cuz they exist, don’t they? And the thing about—about grid waves is, they can pop up at any time and just fuckin’ demolish everything around them, and…”

He watches Sakusa’s long lashes brush against his cheeks when he blinks. Sakusa is eye candy times a hundred and it’s unfair that Atsumu keeps having these fucked-up dreams about the idea of him. Sakusa deserves better than that.

“You just share the same face, is all,” he says. His voice is quiet. The strip lights flicker above them, and Sakusa’s face is cast in sickly fluorescent light. He’s beautiful. “You’re not Dream-Omi, Omi-kun. I swear.”

“I hope you know I wouldn’t tear your fingernails off and stick them on my gloves,” Sakusa says, sounding entirely repulsed, but his posture has relaxed slightly against the wall of lockers. “Your hands need to be in better condition than that.”

It feels kind of good to talk to someone, even if that someone is the one guy he probably _shouldn’t_ be talking to about this. 

“Thanks, Omi-kun,” he says, smiling a little despite himself. “I hope ya know I wouldn’t snap your freaky wrists in real life. Not on purpose, anyway.”

“Well, now I’m worried,” Sakusa says dryly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Fuckin’ weirdo. You touch me _once_ and—”

“I just said I wouldn’t do anything!” Atsumu protests. “So paranoid, Omi-Omi.” He sticks his tongue out and watches as Sakusa’s eyes dart down to it.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Sakusa mutters, grabbing a small bag off the bench. “Give me ten minutes and then we can leave.”

“Alright,” Atsumu says. He’s halfway towards pulling out his phone when Sakusa’s words actually register in his brain. “Wait, what? Leave for where?”

“My apartment.” Sakusa’s expression is unreadable. 

“What?”

“Your sleep thing.” He scratches at the moles above his eyebrow. That fierce glint is back in his dark eyes. “We’re gonna figure it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! if you follow me on twitter you have probably heard me complaining about how this has taken over a month to write. i've split what was originally a one-shot idea into two more cohesive chapters. chapter two will be out soon (read: between two days, two weeks, and two months from now) and atsumu, maybe, will drive a spear through dream-omi's heart. figuratively. or maybe literally. actually, that's kind of a good idea, maybe i should write that, maybe i sh
> 
> (this fic has a [playlist!)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0f2MxhrLQLjSw7TAAAgAvm?si=fyqaSDDnQuSL30xHEkzq3Q)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you need?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for (sorta) vaguely described sexual content at the very beginning of this chapter. if you don't want to see it, skip to "Atsumu jolts awake at three in the morning..."

Dream-Omi is jerking him off under the polished mahogany table. 

Atsumu is in a meeting with three men in navy suits and flashy ties, and they’re talking to him about brand deals and sponsorships and he’s trying to fucking focus but he _can’t_ because Omi is groping him through his slacks. Atsumu’s not a businessman. Doesn’t the team have a manager to sit through meetings and organize these kinds of things? 

“If you would just turn to the next page of your booklet, Miya-san,” the man with the spotted red tie says, and Atsumu obediently licks his finger and flips the paper. Dream-Omi taps once, twice, three times at his hipbone. Atsumu can just see him from his position at the desk. 

_I swear to god, Omi,_ he thinks, glaring viciously down at his handout, _when these assholes leave, I’m gonna kick your fuckin’ face in._

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, squirming in his seat as Omi methodically takes him apart. He knows the businessmen across the table must know what’s going on; Atsumu’s face is flushed and he can’t keep his breath steady. When he lets out a small sound suspiciously close to a whine, all three of them look up. The man in the middle, in the blue tie with little pink bow ties on it, gives him a pointed look. 

“Miya-san,” he says, clearing his throat, “you’re missing a signature. Right there, by your other hand.”

He stands up, adjusting his tie and leaning over. Atsumu knees Dream-Omi in the shoulder and moves his chair closer to the table. 

“Right there,” the man says, tapping at the dotted line. Dream-Omi’s stupid, stupid hands don’t pause for a second, and Atsumu bites down on his lower lip as the man reaches for his ballpoint pen. He grips the underside of his hard-backed wooden chair, fingertips stinging as he digs his nails in. His breath hitches as he weighs his own pen in his hand. “You need to—“

And then the lights go out.

* * *

Atsumu jolts awake at three in the morning, panting, with a crick in his neck and his shirt soaked through with sweat. 

He rubs the blurriness from his eyes and sits up. It takes a long moment for him to realize that he’s not in his own apartment. He looks around, disoriented, at the unfamiliar dresser and the different doorknobs and the smaller laundry hamper, cast baby blue in the moonlight. The thin blanket tossed over him is softer than what he’s used to.

Right. Sakusa’s apartment. After they’d left the locker room, he’d led Atsumu down a few blocks and turned into a small apartment complex. They’d taken the stairwell instead of the elevator. Atsumu had showered in Sakusa’s bathroom, scrubbing at his skin until it was flushed bright pink and stung when he touched it.

They’d eaten yakisoba and watched that weird American psychological horror show _(“It’s a_ drama, _not horror, and it’s not even scary, Miya”)_ Sakusa’s got this creepy obsession with. Sakusa’s couch was clean, beige-colored, and covered in pillows and blankets, and Atsumu had laughed out loud when Sakusa had burrowed underneath one within minutes. 

(“Don’t laugh, asshole,” Sakusa had snapped, flushing. “You’ve got shit in your teeth, by the way.”

Atsumu had run his tongue carefully over his teeth. He hadn’t found whatever was stuck in them.)

Sakusa had turned the TV off around ten-fifteen _(“I always knew ya were secretly an old man, Omi-kun,”_ Atsumu had teased him) and declared it bedtime. He’d gotten the spare futon out of the hall closet and laid it out on his bedroom floor while Atsumu had changed into the shirt and sweatpants Sakusa had lent him. The sweats were long enough on Atsumu that he’d had to cuff them twice around the ankles—Sakusa and him are around the same height, but Sakusa’s height is in his legs. Atsumu has been aware of this for some time, but he’d still felt uncomfortably warm as he’d shoved his hands into his (Sakusa’s?) pockets. 

Sakusa had been sitting cross-legged on his bed, thumb flicking lazily at his phone screen, and he’d looked up when Atsumu had pushed open the bathroom door. 

“Omi-kun,” Atsumu had started to say, and then he’d stopped himself because he didn’t know where his train of thought even left off. He’d forgone coherent thought in favor of staring at Sakusa’s thin white shirt, at his plaid pajama bottoms, at the way he looked so _comfortable_ with himself. Like he wasn’t trying to shrink himself down, the way he usually would outside of volleyball. Atsumu had stared at Sakusa for a long moment and Sakusa had stared back, unblinking. 

“Lights out in fifteen,” Sakusa had said finally, pushing himself off of the bed and brushing past Atsumu on his way to the bathroom. “Don’t wake me up unless it’s an emergency.”

Atsumu had sat down on the futon and laid back against Sakusa’s bed frame and listened to the sound of running water. 

Sakusa had fallen asleep first, one of his arms hanging halfway off the mattress. Atsumu had studied Sakusa’s hand in the moonlight. His hands were— _are—_ pretty. They’re spiker hands, all thick knuckles and smooth nails and protruding veins. His fingers had reached for the floor, almost in prayer, and his nails had shone white in the moonlight. His wrists were bent at seventy-five degrees; delicate, hollow-boned, dreamlike.

Now, Atsumu turns around quick enough to give himself whiplash— _Is Omi still asleep?_ —and comes face-to-face with Sakusa’s messy bedhead, his eyes still half-shut.

“Miya,” he says. His voice is thick with sleep. Atsumu stares. He is very, very aware that he is soaked in sweat and opening and closing his mouth like a goddamn fish. 

He remembers the office furniture melting down like fucking Bakelite as Dream-Omi had got up from between Atsumu’s thighs, wiped his hands clean on his slacks, and stared him dead in the eye. The room had smelled like burning plastic. When Atsumu had blinked next, all that remained had been him, Omi, and the godawful chair. He’d heard faint, echoey music and it was getting creepy, really fucking creepy, and then Dream-Omi had smiled until it reached his eyes and suddenly his smile was all there was. It was like his body had just transformed into one giant mouth; his teeth were strangely rounded, and when Atsumu looked closer he realized they were actually all volleyballs in miniature, corkscrewed haphazardly into Omi’s bleeding gums.

“Hey,” Sakusa says now, and Atsumu braces himself for the inevitable “What the fuck is wrong with you, Miya, suck it up and get back to sleep.” 

Sakusa rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes and sits up straight, swinging his legs off of the bed so that he’s perched at the very edge. He does not tell Atsumu to suck it up. Sakusa is a study in quiet contradictions. Unwillingly, perhaps, but nonetheless:

“Your hands are shaking,” he says, quiet. 

“No fucking _kidding_ they’re shaking.” Atsumu hates the way his voice cracks halfway through. “I just saw you split down the middle like that bitchass clown from IT.”

Sakusa pauses, cocks his head, and says the second-worst thing possible: “I thought you didn’t like horror movies.”

Atsumu wants to ask Sakusa if he can see his teeth. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he considers irrationality. Considers psychosis. Considers the way fear wraps around his neck like a noose, presses hard against his voice box as the air in his lungs slips away. 

“Omi-kun, I—” he starts, voice thin, shoulders drawn in a taut, unwavering line.

Sakusa reaches out.

* * *

Atsumu has only held Sakusa Kiyoomi’s hands in his own once before. The time in question had been around two months ago, before practice had started. Sakusa had been trying to tape his fingers on his own, and the gym had been empty; Atsumu had approached, and Sakusa hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no, either. Atsumu had slowly, methodically wrapped KT tape up the length of Sakusa’s middle and ring fingers. He had done so silently, lips pressed tightly together, and Sakusa had not thanked him after he’d pulled away. Later, Atsumu had failed a setter dump and Sakusa had stared coolly down at him from the other side of the net, outstretched arms arching over his head. 

Sakusa’s hand is warmer now than it was on that day, maybe a little more calloused. His nails are longer. His wrist bends obscenely in the moonlight, and Atsumu stares unabashedly at the neat, arching curve of it. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi is not flexible. This is not a law in the sense of gymnastics or middle splits, both of which he is well-versed in; but of a deeper kind, the way he always uses his left sleeve to open doors and wears a face mask even in thirty-seven-degree heat. Sakusa Kiyoomi does not bend for others. This is a law of nature in the same way of gravity and tides, and Atsumu knows it better than anyone else except for maybe Sakusa himself. Sakusa had declined a hypothetical trek through ten meters of muddy marsh water if it meant Atsumu’s survival was ensured. This is who he is. Who he always has been. The point of a law is that there are no exceptions. 

But: Atsumu’s palms are slick with sweat, and his nails are just a little bit too short, and his pinky finger started bleeding during practice earlier, and he’s still sort of panting like he’s just done suicide runs the way they all had in their high school gyms, and Sakusa’s sweatpants are cuffed twice around his ankles, and he’s gross and sweaty and just this side of indecent, and Sakusa’s holding his hand anyway. 

“Omi,” he says, and his voice stumbles over two goddamn fucking syllables. He looks up, then back down. He can’t meet Sakusa’s eyes. His palms are quite literally dripping with sweat. He rubs them not-so-discreetly on his sweatpants, all too aware of Sakusa’s eyes on him.

“Omi-kun,” he says again. This time, his voice holds. He blinks hard, then looks up. 

Sakusa is leaned over him, feet hooked around the edge of his mattress so that he doesn’t fall off and crack three or four of Atsumu’s ribs. He looks, as always, completely serious. What is different: this seriousness is usually partially eclipsed with either irritation, boredom, or a combination of both. It occurs to Atsumu that this Sakusa is probably entirely genuine. The thought makes him feel a little sick.

“I’m real,” Sakusa says, his gaze boring thick, neat holes into Atsumu’s skull. His voice is low.

“Yeah,” Atsumu says faintly. “Hey, would it be weird if I asked you to open your mouth? So I could, uh. See your teeth?”

“Atsumu.”

Atsumu, who has been fidgeting with his pinky finger, stills. Sakusa’s other hand comes up to push his thumb and pinky apart, and then he fits his fingers in between Atsumu’s. His elbow is bent almost all the way backward to accommodate this. Why he is accommodating this in the first place is beyond Atsumu. 

Sakusa’s windows are cracked open the barest amount and, in their silence, the shrill _chirp_ of crickets below the windowsill fills the room. The moon is waning tonight. Its light reflects off of Sakusa’s porcelain skin and his stupid, messy hair. Sakusa’s lips are parted, his brows furrowed, blankets pooled around his legs. He is an angel fallen down to earth alongside rain and hail and meteorites. 

He squeezes Atsumu’s hand, and he says with drills for eyes: “Atsumu. I promise you.”

* * *

_I promise you._

* * *

He wakes up to a foot in his face and a snappish, “Miya. Get up. It’s ten till eight.”

It takes him a moment to place the foot in question—Osamu? Shouyou? Bokuto? But then his ears start working, and yeah, he’d recognize that voice anywhere. He unsticks his eyes and looks up. Sakusa is standing over him looking, as always, vaguely irritated and carefully bored. He’s already showered; his hair curls in thick, shiny, ringlets he will no doubt ruin with a hairbrush by the end of today. It’s a shame, really. 

“Fuck me,” Atsumu groans, batting Sakusa away. “‘M goin’ back to sleep.”

“Like hell you are. Practice starts at nine, you know. Well, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

“Th’fuck is _that_ supposed’ta mean,” he mumbles, shoving his face into the pillow. After a moment, Sakusa resumes poking at his head with his foot. Atsumu cracks an eye open and glares. 

“Miya. Get up.”

“No.”

“Get up.”

“Make me.”

Sakusa raises an eyebrow. 

“Fuck, I take it back,” Atsumu groans, pulling the blanket over his head. “Don’t pull anythin’ funny, Omi-kun.”

He gets six, maybe seven seconds of blissful peace and quiet before Sakusa quite literally drags him to his feet by his wrists. He steps on the tail of the blanket so that it falls to the floor as he pulls Atsumu upright. Atsumu tries to bat Sakusa’s hands away as he teeters on his feet, but Sakusa’s grip is unrelenting. He struggles for a moment longer before settling to rest his forehead against Sakusa’s shoulder, too tired to do much else. Sakusa’s hands stay steady around his wrists. 

“Miya.”

“You totally called me Atsumu last night, didn’t ya,” he mumbles into the fabric of Sakusa’s shirt. 

“Did I? Slip of the tongue.”

Atsumu thinks back to Sakusa’s hand in his, his sharp cheekbones highlighted with blue light. Of drifting off thinking of nothing but the weight of Sakusa’s hand against his own. He suddenly feels very, very awake. 

“Omi-kun,” he says slowly, and his eyes go wide as he pulls away from Sakusa’s shoulder. Sakusa’s frowning minutely when their eyes meet, but Atsumu feels impossibly light. “Holy shit, Omi-kun, I didn’t dream at all.”

“What?” 

“No dreams,” Atsumu says, grinning. “Didn’t even wake up.” 

“You woke up last night,” Sakusa says, eyes narrowed. “Do you really not remember? You woke _me_ up.”

“I meant after I fell back asleep.” There’s an apology suddenly crowded against his tonsils, but it dissipates when Sakusa huffs and squeezes his wrists gently before he lets go. 

“I guess it worked,” he says, already turning around. 

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, I guess.” 

_What_ worked, exactly? What had been the point of the last fourteen hours? What was the purpose of Sakusa letting him use his extra pair of slippers, an extra toothbrush, an extra blanket? What was the purpose of ignoring a half-baked confession in favor of takeout and weird TV? Sakusa never does anything without purpose. Where does that leave Atsumu?

Sakusa pulls his sleep shirt off and rummages around in his dresser for a fresh one. Atsumu stares at the broad expanse of his back. It’s not the first time he’s seen him with his shirt off—they’re teammates, they see each other half-naked on the daily—but this feels different, somehow. More intimate. Atsumu finds himself staring at the moles dotting Sakusa’s shoulder blades. 

“What were you dreaming about, before?”

Atsumu blinks, averting his eyes to the windowsill as Sakusa turns back around, pulling down the hem of his shirt. “What? Oh. I—I dunno.”

“I thought you said you remembered everything afterward,” Sakusa says, and he’s definitely noticed the splotchy flush spreading across Atsumu’s cheeks and down his neck. He levels Atsumu with a capital L look that screams _no bullshit. “What_ is it, Miya. It can’t possibly be worse than the nail gloves.”

“No, it’s just...weird,” he says hesitantly. 

_“Miya.”_

He closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. His heartbeat echoes in his ears. “You gave me a handjob in the middle of a meeting and then everything disappeared an’ ya filled the room with melty plastic and smiled real big, like, _really_ big, your whole body was basically just a mouth. An’ I think I had glasses, but that’s not really...”

“Oh,” Sakusa says, frowning, and he sits back down on the bed.

“Yeah.”

Dream-Omi had watched Atsumu carefully as the room melted down around them and hardening plastic trapped his legs in the ground. His stare was cold, even, calculating. Atsumu shivers. 

“Didja know I actually have reading glasses?” He says to fill the silence. His voice comes out thin, an octave too high. “Don’t usually use ‘em, though. I dunno where I put them. I think ‘Samu might have ‘em right now, actually.”

“Miya.”

“It’s _Atsumu.”_ His voice sounds too whiny, too loud. He looks Sakusa in the eye, then looks away. 

“Miya. Sit down.”

He purses his lips, uncomfortably aware of Sakusa’s gaze. He can’t look him in the eye. “Don’t we hafta leave soon? You really wanna be late for the first time in yer life ‘cause you were playin’ therapist?”

“I’ve been late plenty of times in my life,” Sakusa says, sounding affronted. “And it’s—it’s not about that. I usually get to practice early anyway.”

“‘Course you do,” Atsumu mumbles, toeing at the blanket on the floor. 

Sakusa sighs, crossing his legs, and gestures for Atsumu to sit down beside him. Atsumu stands for a long moment, deliberating, and he’s never been an indecisive sort of person but this is all still kind of _new_ to him, the way his mouth goes dry at a flick of Sakusa’s wrist and his brain spends six to eight hours almost every night dreaming about the idea of him.

He sits down.

“I—“ Sakusa looks down. Picks at a fingernail. “I know I’m not perfect. But, ah...I just...I wanted to—“

Sakusa is usually a very articulate person. He does not speak unnecessarily. If he is displeased, he will let you know. If he is offended, he will suss out your top three weaknesses and spear all three through the heart in quick succession. If he is angry, he will go very still and very silent. You will hope in your heart of hearts that it is not you he breaks his silence for.

“Spit it out, Omi-kun,” Atsumu says anyway, true to his asshole form. Now more than ever, it is crucial not to break character. Not when Sakusa’s picking at his cuticles and his eyes are narrowed and he’s hunching in on himself again. This is...is...it’s _weird_ is what it is. Ordinarily, Atsumu is a jerk and Sakusa is a jerk right back. They do not sit criss-cross applesauce on red shag rugs and talk about their feelings while making gingerbread-man cutouts out of Play-Doh; this is not preschool, and they have only recently made the reluctant jump from acquaintances to actual friends. Their dynamic lately has been out of sorts, and Sakusa doesn’t seem to want to help things along at all. Atsumu just wants to go back to dropping cheesy pickup lines so that Sakusa will glare at him and nudge his shoulder with his own. It’s comfortable. Easy. Routine. Much less complicated than thin sheets and unacknowledged confessions. He misses more than anything the quiet afternoons spent with Sakusa on the court, watching as his arms came back up unfailingly for spike after spike after spike. 

Atsumu knows devotion all too well. He had observed it in the cold light of winter mornings, leaning in the doorway of his high school volleyball team’s club room and watching Kita Shinsuke meticulously wipe down their lockers. He had stared down the space between Kita’s shoulder blades, their outline just visible beneath his black-and-white jersey, and dreamed. He had grown so, so much in the two years he’d spent standing behind Kita, watching as his shoulders filled out and his hair curled outward at the tips. Kita had taught him devotion silently. Atsumu had never been good with words. 

“You’ve changed,” Sakusa says bluntly. Light filters through the blinds, falls crosshatched on his bare legs. “Since high school.”

Atsumu watches him dig his thumbnail into the soft flesh between his other thumb and index finger. He allows himself to think, consciously, of those calloused hands taking him apart. Piece by piece. Limb by limb. If Sakusa touched him in this instant, Atsumu might not survive it. 

“Guess so,” he says. “I mean, whaddya expect? It’s been years, Omi-kun.”

“I suppose so.” Sakusa’s frowning. Atsumu feels like he’s missed something important. 

“That wasn’t what you were gonna say, though,” he says. 

“No.” 

“Well?” 

A small bird, speckled brown and yellow, lands on the windowsill. Atsumu watches its tail flick back and forth before it hops back to the ledge and spreads its wings again. 

“If you want to stay tomorrow,” Sakusa says after a lengthy pause. His voice sounds strained. “If you...that would be...it’s not an issue.”

Atsumu, who has been yanking on a loose thread on the hem of Sakusa’s sheets, stills abruptly.

“You’re okay with that?” 

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

Atsumu taps his foot against the floor. This is _nice,_ and it’s nice of Sakusa, and it’s just plain weird because it’s so unlike him. 

“Okay,” he says slowly.

“Okay as in yes?”

“Okay as in...I’ll...think about it.” He stands up, and a corner of the sheet falls to the floor. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” 

Sakusa looks left. Atsumu looks right. The day begins. 

* * *

Atsumu thinks about it.

And then he goes home after practice. He cooks himself kimchi fried rice and watches shit TV and goes to bed at eleven-thirty. He wakes up at one in the morning gasping for air. He does not fall back asleep until the sun is almost up.

He stands stock-still as Foster looks up at him the next morning, frowning. _Atsumu. Take the rest of the week off._

* * *

Atsumu appreciates simplicity. This is perhaps a learned trait, picked up from Kita sometime in between being the asshole to end all assholes and finding himself on the receiving end of basic human decency. He is aware that he does not come off as minimalistic in any sense of the word, and it’s not that he _is,_ even—it’s just that, well. It’s a learned behavior. Less mess means less cleanup. Less cleanup means more time to fool around with Aran and Osamu. Fooling around with Aran and Osamu means that Kita will inevitably stop to make conversation. 

He is not in high school anymore, but some of the habits he’d picked up then are as intrinsic as breathing or blinking. This is why he had gone to practice anyway, even if only to sit on the bench. Sakusa had given him a look when Atsumu had started to turn down the opposite street from Sakusa’s apartment as they left the building, and so Atsumu had hiked his near-empty bag up on his shoulder and followed him to the grocery store, to the apartment, to the gym, back to the grocery store, back to the apartment. Atsumu had cooked them both dinner. Sakusa, thankfully, had made no remarks. 

“So what’s different now?” 

Sakusa rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his elbow. A pale strip of moonlight paints his chest a stark white against his navy bed sheets. The digital clock on his desk reads _21:43_ because Sakusa is the kind of asshole who uses military time. “What do you mean?”

Atsumu folds his hands across his chest, looking up at the ceiling. “Me. You said all that earlier about me bein’ all different now. What was that?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.”

_“Omi-kun.”_

_“Miya.”_ Sakusa blinks, and Atsumu sees it in slow motion; the way his eyelashes brush against his cheekbones borders on obscene. 

“What’s different?” Atsumu presses. 

“Well. You’re older.” Atsumu frowns at him, and Sakusa shakes his head. “I meant that you—you act your age now.” He wrinkles his nose. “No, not—you—“ 

“Spit it out, asshole.” He doesn’t think Sakusa’s _trying_ to make a jab at him, necessarily, but still. Still. He’s laying here on the spare futon again, watching the night paint the lines right off of Sakusa’s body. This night, this moment—it’s anything but light. Atsumu has never been great at being serious. 

“I mean that you— _ugh.”_ Sakusa makes a frustrated noise, dropping his head to his pillow. 

_“What?”_

“You’re a jackass, you know.” Sakusa’s voice is muffled, fists clenched around the edges of his thin pillowcase. Atsumu wants to hold his fucking hand. 

“You love me,” he says instead. It comes out sounding a little too sincere. He shoves his hands under his pillow. 

* * *

The clock reads _02:10_ when Atsumu falls from the top of a two-hundred-story building with Dream-Omi’s voice in his ears. 

“Atsumu,” he hears, and he sits up straight, throwing his blanket aside. Sweat beads on his skin, drips down his temples and his shoulders and his calves. He feels nauseated. 

“Atsumu. Atsumu.”

He’s breathing hard, panting like he’s just done suicide runs without warming up first, and his fists clench and unclench rhythmically around the fabric of his shirt. _Sakusa’s_ shirt, he realizes faintly, recalling the Itachiyama practice shirt Sakusa had thrown at him earlier. It’s soaked in sweat, now—he can feel the fabric sticking to him, pulling at his skin as he shifts his arms. 

“Atsumu. _Breathe.”_

His voice sticks in his throat when he says, “‘M tryin’ to, Omi-Omi,” and it comes out dangerously close to a sob. 

Sakusa is silent for a moment. Atsumu doesn’t want to look up. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Fuck, Omi, I dunno,” he pants, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. His breaths are coming too hard, too fast. “Can’t even fuckin’ tell what’s going on anymore. It’s not even you. Didn’t have your face today. I dunno what you think I’m dreamin’ about, but it’s not—”

It’s an idea, really. A series of ideas. Dream-Omi is an amalgamation of uncertainty, of distrust, of _fear._ Dream-Omi is a goddamn knee injury. Sakusa and Dream-Omi could never be the same person because Sakusa is kind beneath all the assholery. Dream-Omi’s not even a _person._

“What the fuck is _wrong_ with me, Omi,” he says, leaning forward. His hands come up to cover his face and he presses hard, fingertips digging into his temples. “I just wanna be able to go to bed like a—like a _normal_ person. Like how things used to be.”

If Sakusa notices Atsumu rubbing at his eyes, he doesn’t mention it. He is quiet. Composed. That’s Sakusa. If he doesn’t have to speak, he won’t; if he does open his mouth, it will not remain so for very long. 

“What do you need?”

It’s quiet, so quiet that if Atsumu wasn’t feeling so much like a live wire right now, he might have missed it. 

“Fuck,” he says softly. He can feel his eyes brimming over. “Shit, Omi, stop tryin’ to do— _whatever_ this is.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“It’s throwin’ me off,” he mumbles into his palms. 

“Atsumu. I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” 

This is it, then; do or die. The fall off of that building was nothing compared to now. It wasn’t even real. Sakusa, on the other hand, is very much real. Atsumu will have to deal with the very real fallout once he opens his stupid mouth.

Atsumu looks up, almost regretting it when he meets Sakusa’s intense stare. “I—fuck, Omi-kun, are ya really gonna make me say it?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.” Sakusa’s eyes are fixed on his with none of their usual ire and all of their usual determination. “Just spit it out.”

Atsumu runs a shaking hand across his eyes, and his stomach turns when he realizes they’re still wet. 

_“Atsumu.”_

“I—I need you to touch me, Omi-kun,” he stutters out, squeezing his eyes shut. He can feel his ears going red. This is how he will die, then—in Sakusa’s apartment, in Sakusa’s room, in Sakusa’s clothes. This moment is forever. He will remember the embarrassment that weighs him down now for the rest of his short, meaningless life. 

He chances a glance up. Sakusa is frowning as though Atsumu is a particularly difficult column in a crossword puzzle.

“I meant—not like _that.”_ He rushes to correct himself, feeling the heat in his cheeks more than ever. “I just—I need someone to, like, fuckin’, hug me or somethin’.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, hears the _click_ echo through the room. “It’s stupid, yeah, but I just…”

Sakusa regards him with an unreadable look for a long moment before pulling his blanket open and shifting towards the wall. 

“Omi-kun?” 

“It’s not stupid. Get in.”

 _“What?”_ What the fuck is happening. Is Atsumu dreaming?

Sakusa has the gall to look irritated. “Atsumu. Get in the fucking bed before I go back to sleep.”

“Wait, wait, wait—“

* * *

His sheets smell like lavender. 

“Your sheets smell like lavender,” Atsumu says, pulling the blanket over himself. His hands are still shaking. 

“When was the last time someone touched you.” Sakusa, as always, does not frame his sentences with question marks. His voice is flat. Atsumu feels him turn onto his side, the mattress shifting beneath them. 

“You, the other night.”

“Before that.”

He sighs. “I dunno.”

He thinks he’s probably lonely. Lost in solitude, perhaps, so far gone that his fucked-up brain started dreaming up fucked-up fantasies of _touch_ and _want_ and _love._ His Hirakata apartment is as good as empty. He misses Hyogo. Misses his mom and dad. 

“Did something happen?”

There. A question. 

“Not really.” _I started to want you to look me in the eye._ “I guess I just miss bein’ around other people.” He feels open, vulnerable, curled into himself on the edge of an unfamiliar mattress. His hands find each other beneath the blanket, and he starts picking at his index fingernail. “Whaddya askin’ for?”

Sakusa is silent for a long moment. Just when Atsumu starts to think he may have legitimately fallen asleep, Sakusa whispers, “I think I’m stalling.”

The moon is nearly full. Sakusa’s bedroom is aglow in its soft light, shadows burning blue-tone against Atsumu’s eyes. 

“I’m going to touch you,” Sakusa says, just as quietly. 

Atsumu turns over, drawing back immediately when he finds himself practically nose-to-nose with Sakusa. His eyes are dark, his face as expressionless as ever. Atsumu’s gaze drops to the moles on his jaw. 

“Are you sure this is okay,” Sakusa says, statement, eyes flickering between Atsumu’s like he’s...almost like he’s _unsure_ of himself, like he’s honestly trying his best to _not_ be a jerk. This is a first of sorts, almost sacrosanct. 

“Yeah,” Atsumu croaks out, voice sticking in his throat. “‘S more than okay, Omi, ya know that.”

Sakusa’s hand comes up to cup his face, and Atsumu’s chest aches with the motion. Sakusa’s hands are still large, still rough, still calloused. Atsumu wants to drown in him, probably. It would be so easy to lean forward and kiss him.

Distantly, he wonders if this is really okay. Sakusa Kiyoomi had not asked for Atsumu to fall in love with him. He had asked, pretty specifically, for exactly the opposite. And yet here they are, ten centimeters apart, breathing in the same air. Is Atsumu taking advantage of his momentary kindness? 

“What about you, are you okay with…” he starts, tearing his gaze away from Sakusa’s mouth, and then Sakusa’s arms loop around his sides and his mind goes blissfully blank. 

His first coherent thought is that Sakusa smells like lavender. His skyscraper heart picks up tempo dangerously, dangerously, dangerously as Sakusa shifts closer and folds himself around Atsumu. Sakusa’s hair smells like lavender and that stupid two-in-one shampoo he insists on using. His arms are bare, warm against Atsumu’s sides.

“Omi,” Atsumu gasps, chest tight. Sakusa’s head rests gently against his shoulder, and Atsumu feels every warm exhale against his neck. He could stop breathing from this. Maybe he already has. 

“Shut th’fuck up,” Sakusa mumbles into Atsumu’s shoulder. His lips brush the junction between Atsumu’s neck and collarbone. Atsumu feels electric. 

“Shutting up now,” he says, voice wavering. It’s a lot all at once, the feel of another body pressed tight against his. Sakusa is a warm, solid weight against him, wayward curls tickling Atsumu’s jaw. It’s all very warm—the bed; the sheets; inexplicably, the gray-blue shadows— and when Sakusa lets out a small sigh against his neck, Atsumu almost wants to cry. He lets his arms rest tentatively around Sakusa’s shoulders and exhales slowly. 

He counts in his head, breathing in and out with alternating numbers. His heartbeat steadies around thirty-five. His eyes stop burning at fifty-six. The moon falls in increments, warping the shadows until Atsumu sees ten-foot monsters in retrograde. He shuts his eyes. 

“You okay?” Sakusa’s voice is lower, blurred with drowsiness. His hands fidget mindlessly with the hem of Atsumu’s shirt and Atsumu feels something in his chest stutter.

“Yeah. Fuck. I—uh.” He exhales heavily, letting his chin rest on Sakusa’s head. “Don’t let go, ‘kay?” 

“Yeah,” Sakusa says sleepily, and his lips brush Atsumu’s neck again. “Not gonna. Go to sleep.”

“Okay,” he whispers, letting his lips rest against the crown of Sakusa’s head, and it sounds like a prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha i've been listening to switchblade by niki for the past three hours and i have no brain left. i edited this instead of writing my ap english essay. it's due tomorrow. fuck
> 
> but yeah! uh. sorry this took so long, school started back up and i currently have no free time. this story spiraled wildly out of control and i did end up splitting it up into three parts instead of two, so expect the last bit relatively soon. as per usual, by soon i could mean anything from two days to two months. i am very sorry i have clowned all of us with my slow typing and slower thought process
> 
> okay. i hope you are doing well. let me know if this is good or bad or Just Okay! comments literally make my entire week


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you have?

Bokuto’s watching him. 

Atsumu spits a mouthful of tap water into the bathroom sink and splashes his face. The gym’s bathroom mirror stretches ten meters wide, six sinks spaced evenly between. Atsumu looks up at his reflection under the harsh fluorescent strip lights and frowns when Bokuto meets his gaze. 

_“What,_ Bokkun,” he mutters, patting his face dry with the collar of his shirt. If there’s one thing he knows about Bokuto Koutarou, it’s that he will follow you _everywhere_ until he says what he has to say. 

“Sakusa’s in an awful good mood today,” Bokuto chirps. Atsumu wipes his hands off on his shorts. “Something happen?”

“What?” Atsumu turns away from the mirror, leaning the right half of his face against the cool tile wall. “Uh, I dunno. Ask him?”

“Yeah, I did,” Bokuto says, hopping up onto the sink ledge. His legs kick back and forth, barely missing the floor. If he’s not careful, he might break something, Atsumu thinks wryly, watching his legs swing closer and closer to the exposed water piping. 

“And?”

“Glared at me like I had the flu or something. I haven’t been sick in _months!_ Anyway, I figured you’d probably know what’s up with him. You guys are pretty close, right?” 

“Uh.” He stares down at the beige tiling. “Yeah, I guess so?”

Bokuto squints at him. Atsumu smooths on his best blank stare. 

“What?” 

“What?”

“That sounds so... _halfway,_ Tsum-Tsum.”

“I mean, we’re teammates, right?” he says, scratching at his neck. “It’s not...yanno, weird or anything.” 

“I never said it was weird.” Bokuto frowns. “It’s better than when you guys used to yell at each other all the time. I mean…” he shrugs. “You guys yell differently now. It’s not mean.”

“That’s…”

Heat surges into Atsumu’s cheeks. He feels the ghost of Sakusa’s touch even now; his fingers pressed into the curve of his back, his cheek against Atsumu’s collarbone, his breaths hot against Atsumu’s neck. Of tangible, solid proof. You are real. You are not alone. A bonfire burns beneath your skin. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Bokuto looks genuinely concerned. He is not a doctor but he has good intentions, which accounts for at least thirty percent of the battle. He reaches over to feel Atsumu’s forehead with the back of his hand. “You look kinda sweaty and no, before you ask, it’s not in the sexy magazine way. Do you have a fever?”

“I don’t have a fever, Bokkun,” he says irritably, batting Bokuto’s hand away. “I’m just—stupid.”

Stupid. Stupid. He is panicking inside. He is making sleeping in the same bed a bigger deal than it really is. Maybe Sakusa doesn’t even remember the half-assed half-confession or the details of Atsumu’s dreams. Maybe Sakusa’s forgotten the curve of Atsumu’s back against his chest—they haven’t talked about any of it since it started. Maybe he has amnesia. Selective memory. Maybe he just doesn’t care. 

“I dunno,” Bokuto says dubiously. “Maybe we should get Sakusa to check you out, see if anything’s wrong—”

“Did I just hear my name,” comes a familiar, deadpan voice. 

“Oh, there you are!” Bokuto hops down from the ledge and waves at Sakusa, who looks, as always, vaguely irritated. “Tsum-Tsum wanted to know if you and him were friends. Also I think he might be sick.” 

_“Bokkun,”_ Atsumu hisses, scandalized.

Sakusa frowns impressively at him. “Since when are you sick.”

“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” he protests, “you know I’m not! Bokkun just—”

“Anyway, you should check if Atsumu’s okay,” Bokuto says, moving to the door. He grins widely at Atsumu. “I really hope you don’t have the flu! Practice picks up in, like, two minutes, so be back soon. Okayseeyoulater!”

Huh. Atsumu watches the bathroom door fall shut with an odd sense of pride. Bokuto is, perhaps, not entirely tactless. 

“What was that about.” Sakusa shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, still glowering impressively. “I swear, Miya, you’re not even supposed to be back until next Monday, if you’re fucking sick I’m—”

“I’m _not_ sick,” Atsumu whines. He climbs up onto the sink ledge, where Bokuto had been sitting moments earlier. It creaks slightly beneath him, and he winces. “That was just Bokkun being stupid. Don’t listen to him.”

“I don’t trust either of you,” Sakusa mutters, but he moves a step closer. 

“Here, feel.” Atsumu sweeps his bangs out of his eyes. “Not sick. Totally fine. _And_ I washed my face, so it’s not even gross.”

Sakusa gives him an odd look, somewhere between his usual frown and extreme exasperation. Atsumu lets his hand fall from his hair. 

Atsumu does not believe in miracles or fate or gods. He is the master of his own destiny. He is free to fuck up as completely as he can and has done so on several occasions. He does not thank anyone except himself for a well-placed set, or a decently home-cooked meal, or a circle of friends he feels at ease with. Maybe it’s arrogant to think this way, but it’s true—the outcome of a situation is dictated almost entirely by his efforts. Maybe this is Kita Shinsuke’s eternal impact on him or maybe this is defiance or maybe this is maturity. 

So he doesn’t consider it a miracle when Sakusa exhales heavily and steps up to him. Sakusa does this with the air of a man walking the plank, except beneath the plank is not water but a field of shapeshifting dreams. Atsumu hopes Sakusa can stand to ignore the dreams for a moment longer. 

It’s simple in a way that screams _Sakusa._ He doesn’t hesitate. He steps up to Atsumu. Meets his eyes. Presses the back of his hand to Atsumu’s forehead. 

It’s all over in about fifteen seconds. Sakusa, who is not a doctor but knows about these kinds of things through the repercussions of his vague mysophobia, pulls his hand away and says, “You’re fine.”

“Told ya, Omi-Omi,” Atsumu mumbles under his breath. Sakusa reaches around him to wash his hands. “I never get sick.”

“Famous last words.” He flicks water at Atsumu when the tap shuts off. 

“I’m _fine.”_

“You can never be too careful, _Atsumu.”_

Atsumu stiffens, eyes going wide. Sakusa is still close, close enough that they’re almost touching. He won’t look away from Atsumu, who flushes all over again. Sakusa’s eyes are dark, insistent, determined. _Atsumu,_ his brain repeats like a curse, a hundred echoes ricocheting through his head. 

“Omi-kun,” he whispers. 

Sakusa moves a half-step forward, nudging Atsumu’s legs open. His hands, still damp, hover above the counter for a second before they settle gently around Atsumu’s sides. He smells like a _boy,_ sweat and deodorant and his idiotic two-in-one shampoo, and Atsumu’s stomach flips. He reaches up to run a hand through Sakusa’s messy curls. Sakusa lets out the barest of sighs, head dropping ever-so-slightly forward. 

Distantly, it registers in Atsumu’s head that this is not what platonic friendship generally entails. Then again, they have spent the last few days _literally in bed_ with each other. Ten centimeters further and he might lose what little self-control is keeping him together. 

Atsumu runs his hand through the shorter hairs at the base of Sakusa’s neck, and Sakusa lets out a breathy exhale, louder than the last. Atsumu’s fingertips are tingling. His fingers tangle further into Sakusa’s hair, tugging slightly. He leans imperceptibly forward, and their noses touch.

“Atsumu—” 

“Omi—” _Desperate,_ he sounds _desperate—_

The door slams open. 

“Hey, are you guys— _oh.”_

Atsumu jerks violently and hits his head against the mirror. Sakusa lets him go so quickly that Atsumu still feels his hands around his waist when Sakusa’s halfway across the bathroom, shoving them into his pockets. 

“Ah, Omi-san, Atsumu-san, I really didn’t...see...anything…”

Hinata Shouyou winces as the door clicks shut loudly behind him. Atsumu feels a wave of secondhand embarrassment for Shouyou on top of what is already shaping up to be the most embarrassing moment of Atsumu’s career. He rubs the back of his head, wincing. 

“Um,” Shouyou says, beet-red to the tips of his hair, “I think I’m gonna, uh. Go. Practice is starting back up. I was supposed to—um. I’m really sorry!”

“Yeah,” Atsumu says, squeezing his eyes shut and tipping his head back. “We’ll be back in a second, Shouyou, just—”

He motions to the door. Shouyou squeaks and yanks it back open. 

“Fuck,” Atsumu groans, crumpling against the mirror as the door closes gently. Within the last thirty seconds he has experienced every emotion from pure longing to shame to frustration. And then he feels bad for being upset with Shouyou, even for a second, because Shouyou has this kind of golden-retriever effect that makes anyone within a two-hundred-meter radius unable to dislike him. 

“Miya,” Sakusa says. He stands a respectful two meters away, hands shoved deep into his pockets. His posture is carefully slumped again, his gaze trained on his shoelaces. “I should... _we_ should get back to practice.”

“Yeah.” 

Here is the thing: Sakusa has a complicated relationship with touch. Atsumu has gotten to know this only for it to be upended completely. Rule one of the universe, circa the second time he touched Sakusa’s hands, is this: Sakusa Kiyoomi does not touch unnecessarily. Given the choice, he would probably install a Plexiglass cage around himself and live life hauling it around. The gym. The grocery store. Maybe even his own bedroom. He would sooner live through a transparent box than accommodate for a handshake with a news reporter. 

Here is the thing: Atsumu is intimately familiar with desire. He had spent his childhood chasing missed balls around the garden, legs scratched and bloodied by thistles when he emerged carrying them under one arm, triumphant. He had spent his adolescence chasing first string, then first place. He had spent the last of his teenage years staring desperately at the curl of white-gray hair at the base of a neck and wondering how it would feel to touch its blunt ends. Atsumu can be boiled down entirely to these facets: volleyball and desire and volleyball. Or, if you would prefer: desire and volleyball and desire. One is invariably sandwiched between the others because Atsumu is invariably sandwiched between the only constants he’s ever known.

Here is the thing: without more than a moment’s hesitation, Sakusa has allowed Atsumu into the Plexiglass prism. This is not constant in the slightest and does not at all correlate with what Atsumu has come to understand about him. What Atsumu does now will impact reality, will impact the box, will impact Sakusa. Consider transparency—barely enough for one, let alone two. 

“Let’s get going, then,” Atsumu says, his hands in his lap. His hands on the ledge. His hands on the paper towel dispenser. His hands on the doorknob because even in this state of semi-panic and semi-suffocation and semi-Plexiglass, he remembers that Sakusa Kiyoomi avoids doorknobs and handles and the like if at all possible. He holds the door open with a paper towel. Sakusa walks out first. 

* * *

Consider, then:

Fine-boned wrists, so delicate in all their strength that they may as well be hollow. Well-kept fingernails, cut just above the cuticle. Tapering, steady fingers, folding decisively at each knuckle. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a dream. Sakusa Kiyoomi is a haunting. 

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi lives across the street from a Kokumin drugstore. 

“I’ll be back soon. Don’t break anything.” Sakusa pulls a pair of nitrile gloves out of his bag and steps delicately into his sneakers. The laces have been tied for at least a month now—by some unknown secret of the universe, his shoes mold themselves perfectly to his feet so that he need not bother lacing and unlacing them three times a day. He pulls on a disposable mask and pinches it over the bridge of his nose.

“I’m gonna break everything.”

“Don’t.”

They haven’t been back from practice for five minutes and already Sakusa is leaving him by himself. He won’t look Atsumu in the eye. The distance between them is an enormous, gaping chasm. Whether or not they will discuss it has not yet been determined. 

“See ya, Omi-Omi,” he says. 

“Yeah. See you.”

The door clicks open. Sakusa steps out. The door clicks shut. 

Atsumu sighs.

The thing about Sakusa Kiyoomi taking a quick trip to Kokumin is that it will not be quick. “Quick” means about an hour spent in the first-aid section, meticulously comparing every brand of hand sanitizer and face mask and antibacterial soap. At the end of all this deliberation, he will return with one, maybe two items. Sakusa, Atsumu has learned, is eighty-five percent hopeless outside of volleyball. 

He sits down on Sakusa’s couch. The room looks different in the afternoon light, with the curtains open and the TV off and the shadows at half-mast. A book sits face-down on the coffee table, pages splayed out against the wood. A small succulent sits perfectly in the center. 

Atsumu doesn’t know what to do so he plays a half-hour of mobile Sudoku, pulling one of the blankets on the couch around his shoulders. Maybe this is retribution. Maybe this is what he gets for loving too fully, too eagerly. He is surrounded by the vestiges of the one person he wants to see, who is currently somewhere else. He doubts anyone else has seen the maple-paneled bookshelf affixed to the left wall, or the large flat-screen TV, or the stack of Wong Kar-Wai movies sitting atop the accompanying cabinet. What is the point of a home if there is no one in it? He thinks of his own apartment, probably grown dusty and in desperate need of ventilation. When was the last time he’d used his own house key?

“You’re being melodramatic.”

Atsumu sits up. The blanket slips from his shoulders. The sky falls away beneath his feet and takes the flat-screen TV and the maple bookshelf and the collection of battered DVDs with it. His fingernails grow two millimeters in two seconds. His fingertips, bitten half raw, heal over and over and over. 

“Who are you?” He asks into empty space. 

“Miya,” a voice echoes, wrapping around his arms and his legs and his heart. Atsumu smells coconut shampoo. Then: “No—that’s not right. He calls you Atsumu now.”

“Who the _fuck_ are you,” Atsumu snarls. The voice turns pink and tangible, frees Atsumu from its many hollow hands. It moves six feet away, then solidifies. 

“I can be whoever you want me to be.” A perfect replica. Identical down to the curls in his hair and the moles above his eyebrow. Sakusa Kiyoomi, in Technicolor. 

“That’s not what I meant.”

Dream-Omi runs his thumb along the edges of his fingernails. Another non-answer. 

“I don’t want you to be anything,” Atsumu says. Around them, the sky blooms startlingly aquamarine. “I want you to leave me the hell alone.”

“Have you really not figured it out yet?” Dream-Omi’s voice sounds like it’s coming directly from Atsumu’s mouth. 

“Figured _what_ out?”

Dream-Omi smiles with his whole mouth. His eyes are still cold, unblinking, unmoving. “I’m sorry. I took you to be much smarter than this.”

Atsumu clenches his fists so hard that his two-millimeter nails split his palms open. _“What.”_

Dream-Omi lifts one delicate hand, studying it from wrist to fingertip like it’s the first time he’s ever seen it. He opens his mouth, runs two fingers over his thin lips, and says with an air of ultimate, godlike fascination, “I’m _you,_ Miya Atsumu.”

Oh. The soles of Atsumu’s feet are splitting open too. His calves. His forearms. His chest. The ground beneath him. Someone has taken a double-bladed axe to his body. Here lies Atsumu, a fractured needle buried in the world’s most massive, fucked-up haystack. Here lie the pieces. Nobody is coming to pick them up. 

“You really fucked up this time, Atsumu,” Dream-Omi says, grinning, six years younger and fifty years wiser. “You really fucked up. You’re in love with a concept.”

Atsumu finds his voice perched atop a falling sakura blossom and swallows it whole. His throat aches. “Liar.” 

“You know I’m right.” Dream-Omi kneels down in front of Atsumu, shadow stretching a kilometer ahead. It curls around Atsumu’s ankles and pulls his hands into its gaping maw. “I’m _you,_ Miya Atsumu. Who would know better?”

“Shut the fuck up. I don’t wanna hear anythin’ about Omi-kun from _you._ If you were really me you’d know he’s nothin’ like you,” he spits, yanking his right arm free. Shadows spill from his pores like monochrome birthday streamers. This is anger. This is freedom and righteousness and probably also desperation. “Yer not even real.”

“Does it matter?”

“Does it— _‘course it does, ya fuckin’ prick!”_

The shadow collapses into him, or maybe he collapses into the shadow, and suddenly it’s just Atsumu and a void and the endless sky above them. The void is a dream. Atsumu is the dreamer. The sky watches down with interest and crunches down on popcorn kernels; this is better than any reality TV show. 

The dream tilts its shadowy head. “I could give you everything, Atsumu.”

“I don’t care.”

“I could give you the universe. I can and I would. You know that.”

“You can eat _shit._ ” Atsumu pulls his left leg free and kicks the shadow-ribbons towards the dream. “Omi-kun’s cool. Yer just an asshole with too much free time.”

“Cool.” The voice multiplies into hundreds of disembodied voices echoing three hundred and sixty degrees around Atsumu, all of them high-pitched and falsely sweet. “Yes, you could definitely say that. Sakusa Kiyoomi is... _cool.”_

 _“Fuck_ you! Let me out!”

“Cool as in chilled. Cool as in frigid.” The dream pulses. “Sakusa Kiyoomi is so _cool_ that he has frozen.”

_“I DON’T CARE!”_

The dream actually stops at this, pausing its vague undulating or soul-sucking or whatever it is it’s doing. 

“Do you even—do you even fuckin’ know who yer talkin’ about? ‘Cause it doesn’t seem like you have any idea who Omi-kun is! Yeah, he’s an ass sometimes. Most of the time. But that doesn’t mean shit, okay? You haven’t—“ Here he gestures wildly at the open space, searching desperately for the words to finish this once and for all. “It’s just how he is. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t _care_. If ya knew that, you wouldn’t have kept this goin’ for months after he said he didn’t hate me. He’s weird, and he’s got a shit personality, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love him anyway.”

“What do you know about love,” the dream spits viciously, but it’s like a mouse shoved into a corner. The cat hovering above it drools unabashedly onto the floor. “You’re still a kid, Atsumu. You don’t know the first thing about _want.”_

“Then what are you tryin’ to make me believe? What was the point of all of that?” 

The dream spits magma into the air. Atsumu sidesteps a barrage of flaming rocks. He moves closer.

“Yer not Omi-kun,” he says, and he feels the ghost of a hand on his. It’s a warm sort of pressure, nothing like the dream, and he presses into it. “I’m not afraid of you, and I don’t want ya here anymore. I don’t _need_ you anymore. Just...go home.”

“You could never satisfy him, you know,” he hears, and the fire fades out around the empty space. The dream shifts, reassembles, remakes. Suddenly Atsumu is standing in his high school gym, staring at a carbon copy of himself from his second year of high school through a half-assembled volleyball net. Around them, the earth trembles—Kita Shinsuke’s gods are angry, and seventeen-year-old Miya Atsumu is very likely one of them. “Yer never gonna be enough, ‘Tsumu.”

“SHADDUP!” He yells, and Dream-Atsumu just shoots him a cocky, condescending look and runs a hand through his piss-yellow hair. He conjures a volleyball out of nowhere and throws it straight through the net. It lands outside of the box. 

“Sakusa Kiyoomi’s gonna get tired of ya one way or another,” Dream-Atsumu says, and when he smirks, his fingertips glow fire-orange. He conjures another volleyball and starts bouncing it. “Yer never gonna have whatcha really want, yanno. Yer too different. It’s never gonna work. He’s gonna realize yer not worth the trouble one day an’ leave ya to rot. Give it up, ‘Tsumu.”

In high school Atsumu hadn’t realized he was supposed to use toner in his hair after he’d bleached it. Osamu’s had come out platinum and he’d never revealed why Atsumu was stuck with mustard yellow with the texture of straw. It hadn’t mattered—he’d found out about toner eventually, scouring the internet with barely relevant keywords until he stumbled upon a salon website, and never let Osamu forget it since. 

Which is to say that Atsumu does not _settle._ Be it a week, two months, three years—his goals are not pipe dreams. He always follows through. Isn’t that the point of being a setter? He is a lesson in insurance, reckless as he is, and he devotes himself entirely to his teammates. There is a reason why people say that spikers have it easy when they play with Miya Atsumu. There will always be a ball in the air whenever they need it, wherever they need it, because Miya Atsumu always follows through. 

“Why dont’cha shut the fuck up for _one goddamn second,”_ he snarls.

“Yer next to nothin’ to him right now. And after you open yer stupid mouth, yer gonna have nowhere to go.”

“You piece of—”

The invisible pressure on his hand increases and it’s warm, warm, warm, and Atsumu jerks forward and if Dream-Atsumu’s fingertips are orange, Atsumu’s are blue, and he reaches out and places both hands on Dream-Atsumu’s heart and the world blooms aquamarine around them and—

—and he wakes up to a hand over his jackhammering heart and another over his right fist. 

“You started...twitching, kind of. I didn’t know what to do,” he hears, and when he blinks the sleep out of his eyes he sees Sakusa beside him. 

Atsumu swallows hard. Sakusa’s hand tightens around his fist and stays there. It’s a comforting sort of pressure, and Atsumu stares at it as he focuses on breathing in and out. The blanket lays discarded beneath him, and he reaches down to fidget with its edges. 

“I’m real,” Sakusa says. 

“I know.”

“Good.”

 _“Fuck,”_ Atsumu whispers, digging his nails into the blanket, “fuck, Omi-Omi, I—“

Sakusa looks down at him, obsidian and lukewarm benevolence. His hand pushes against Atsumu’s chest like he’s trying to stop his heart altogether, and then he pulls away to grab something off the coffee table. 

“Fuck,” Atsumu mumbles, “this—this fuckin’ sucks.”

Sakusa shoves a bowl of okayu at him. 

“‘M not sick, Omi-Omi,” Atsumu says halfheartedly, but he takes it anyway. It’s still steaming. 

“Atsumu. Are you okay.”

Atsumu wants to say something snappy, or maybe something funny. He wants to say “I’m fine, this happens like four times a week,” but the thing is, he’s not fine _because_ this happens like four times a week. He is wearing concealer. He’s getting headaches. His not-dream not-fuckbuddy has stopped fucking his body in order to fuck his mind. 

“Yer too fuckin’ nice,” Atsumu says instead, poking at the bowl with his spoon, and he almost laughs at the sheer absurdity of what he’s saying. “You—lately, you’ve been—are ya mad at me, for this? Is this what it’s like when you play the waitin’ game? When’s the other shoe gonna fall?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“What _are_ ya, then?”

Sakusa runs his tongue over his lower lip. His thumb, which has been hovering awkwardly above Atsumu’s hand, comes down to rest on the flat of his palm. 

“You would know if I was mad at you,” Sakusa says. He looks at Atsumu, really _looks_ at him, and he must think he’s conveying something important and earth-shattering but it’s incredibly lost on Atsumu. “I’m not...I’m not mad.”

“Well, ya should be. _I_ would be. Fuckin’ weirdo tells ya outta the blue that he’s been dreamin’ aboutcha for the past six weeks—I’d run away.”

He sneaks a look up. Sakusa has that expression back on again. Not malice, but not kindness, either. 

“I just—I just. Think. About this. It’s not yer particular brand of wackjob, yanno?” 

Sakusa looks like he’s going through five stages of indecision at once. The sun is setting, now—how long was he out for?—and he is backlit in molten gold. Atsumu watches fragments of light shift through the soft edges of Sakusa’s hair as he tilts his head forward, and he _burns._ This is cosmic irony. This is the other shoe. His heart implodes with all the force of a wildfire, taking down walls and stories and hollow graveyards. A new shelf. A new drawer. Sakusa and volleyball and desire.

“What did you dream about,” Sakusa says finally. 

“What?”

“I said—“

“I know whatcha said, I‘m just kinda surprised y’actually wanna hear about it. ‘S like yer actually interested in me or somethin’.”

“Your ego can convince you of a lot of things, can’t it.”

“Shaddup,” Atsumu mutters, shaking Sakusa’s hand off his own. “Never mind, then.”

Sakusa wrinkles his nose. He has the decency to look slightly abashed. “That was—that—” He sighs. “I do want to know what happened.”

“Yeah, and yer doin’ a real good job of convincing me to tell you,” Atsumu huffs, setting the bowl of okayu (still steaming, mostly untouched) down on the coffee table. He presses a hand to his sternum to make sure that his breathing has slowed, that his tongue has unstuck itself from its seventeen-year-old hollow. He draws his feet up onto the couch cushion and rests his chin in the divot between his knees. It’s easier, this way—he’s forced to look at the splayed-out pages of Sakusa’s half-read novel instead of Sakusa himself. If he looks Sakusa in the eye right now he will probably have to either punch him or kiss him. Or punch him and then kiss him.

“You told me,” Sakusa says, quiet. “The other day. About a washing machine.”

“Yeah.”

“Atsumu.”

“Hey,” Atsumu says instead. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know. Control your dreams. Didn’t you say somethin’ about that a while back?”

There is a small pause, and then Sakusa shifts into Atsumu’s peripherals. The couch dips beneath him. He is closer, now—he has to be closer. Atsumu can feel the heat radiating from his body. Sakusa is the goddamn fucking sun. This is absolutely cosmic irony and Atsumu hates himself for it.

“I don’t think it’s so simple,” Sakusa says carefully. “And if you’re asking for the reason I think you are…I don’t think what you’ve got going on can be solved by shoving it into a box and looking in another direction.”

“Sorta like your germ thing?”

“I don’t have a—” Sakusa sighs, irritated. “That’s not the point.”

“So can you teach me?”

“No. Are you listening? You’re not going to solve anything this way. There is no easy way out.”

Atsumu tilts his head sideways and regrets it immediately. Sakusa is too close. His lips are parted slightly and his hair catches the last of the dying sunlight. Atsumu clears his throat and says, “I think it could help. Teach me.”

“I’m not going to teach you. I don’t even know if it’s something that can be taught.” Sakusa runs a thumbnail beneath his index fingernail. His voice is brittle. “Atsumu. Don’t run away. Please.”

He sounds like he’s talking more to himself than anyone else. He says _please._ His fingernails are in perfect condition but he fidgets with them anyway. The last of Atsumu’s anger disappears over the horizon.

“Okay,” he says, as gently as he knows how. “I—Okay.”

“Okay,” Sakusa repeats. He takes Atsumu’s hand again and pulls the fraying edge of the blanket away from his fingers. “I’m going to make yakisoba. Do you want to help.”

Same old Sakusa. Same day-old monotone. The last of the sun disappears over the horizon, and Atsumu _wants._

* * *

“Yanno, sometimes I think you only keep me around to warm up your blankets.” 

Atsumu flicks on the lamp perched atop Sakusa’s bedside table. Across the bedroom, Sakusa flicks off the light. The cotton-candy lights of Sunday night Hirakata throw bursts of blue and purple across the walls, and Atsumu toys with the blinds for a moment before deciding against them. The digital alarm clock flashes _22:04_ in now-familiar dickish military fashion. Atsumu adjusts Sakusa’s already perfectly-adjusted bed sheets. 

“I’ll be back in a bit.” Sakusa leans against the doorframe, rolling his lower lip beneath his teeth. A thin beam of moonlight slices the room in half and snakes its way up his thigh; Atsumu wants to press his fingers to where it stops just above his hipbone. “I have a phone call to make.”

Atsumu sets his phone on Sakusa’s nightstand and slips under the blankets. “Isn’t it a little late for a phone call?”

“It’s never too late,” Sakusa says, a little sourly. He pulls at the sleeve of his pajama shirt, and then, as if it’s a proper explanation: “My mother.”

“I thought everyone over the age of fifty went to bed at nine.”

“I’ll be back,” he says, straightening. Atsumu watches him weigh his phone in his right hand like it’s more than just an obligation. 

“Don’t miss me too much,” Atsumu mumbles, shoving his face into the pillow. From this angle, the world is blacked out and he cannot see Sakusa smile fondly before leaving for the kitchen. All he hears are footsteps—steady, feather-light. 

The pillow smells like lavender and coconut two-in-one shampoo. 

Atsumu rolls onto his side, eyes still firmly shut, and presses his back to the wall. It’s sort of weird, trying to fall asleep like this, because he and Sakusa have almost always gotten into bed together. Without him the bed feels a little too large, a little too cold. Atsumu pulls the blankets more tightly around his shoulders and imagines Sakusa’s arms around him, forehead tucked into his collarbone. 

“Hi, Mom,” he can faintly hear Sakusa say. “Yeah, it’s good to hear from you too. I know, it’s been a while.”

His voice is deep, rough with exhaustion and liquid with relief. Still monotone. Still just as comforting. Atsumu lets his shoulders relax as Sakusa asks about his mother, and then his father, and then their joint-effort container garden. 

* * *

“Miya. You did this.”

Ash rains down from the sky. They are in a field of blood-red flowers, the petals bowed in deference or embarrassment or maybe both. Chunks of the sky flicker between blue and purple and gold. The body in front of him flickers in slot-machine fashion: Sakusa, Hinata, Bokuto, Thomas, Meian. Its mouth opens, closes, opens again. Inunaki. Ushijima. Oikawa Tooru. 

“You did this,” it repeats, pausing on Sakusa’s face, and Atsumu just smiles. The body assumes Kita Shinsuke’s form, takes a tentative step forward, and turns into Kageyama, Aran, then Hoshiumi; a never-ending roulette of familiar faces. It would be so easy to spend the rest of his life here, if he was looking for fantasy. 

“Everyone’s looking for fantasy,” the dream spits. “That’s the whole fucking point, Miya. Life is nothing without fantasy.”

“What about reality, then?”

“Reality can wait.”

“I tried that. It didn’t work.” Atsumu’s still smiling. “I was lonely.”

“You’re still lonely.”

Atsumu shakes his head. 

The dream steps closer. “You’re an asshole. _He’s_ an asshole. You’re making a mistake.”

“No, I’m not. And I think you know that.” 

“I’d make you happy.” Sakusa’s face again. Sakusa’s face on Kita’s body. Kita. Sakusa. Back to Bokuto. Back to Hinata.

“I’m already happy,” Atsumu says, and he finds that he means it. “That’s what you don’t get. You were makin’ me miserable.”

“I gave you what you needed.”

“Maybe originally.” Atsumu pushes his hair out of his eyes. “But I think somethin’ got lost along the way. You didn’t do this properly.”

“I can try again.”

“No,” Atsumu says gently. “No, you can’t.”

“You’re not strong enough for this.” Around them, the dreamscape flickers. A field of lilies blooms around them, but when Atsumu inhales, all he can smell is coconut and lavender. 

“I know what I want,” he says, “and I know I’ll have the strength for it.”

The dream is an ugly thing, forgoing human form to arch meters above Atsumu’s head. It solidifies at about twenty-five, a thick monolith of desperation. “How can you be so sure?” 

Because one evening, Sakusa had lent him an umbrella and walked home with just a raincoat. Because he’d never said thank you for the KT tape or the thousands of sets or the paper towels on door handles, but he’d given up the closest parts of himself because Atsumu had asked for it. Because he’d never ask himself.

“I dunno,” Atsumu says, smiling. “But you never know if you never try, right?” 

A door appears in front of him: transparent, hardly even visible save for the glinting doorknob. It separates Atsumu and the dream in a barely-discernible line. The doorknob is brass, heavy, and Atsumu lets his hand rest on it for a moment before twisting it sideways. 

“Well,” Atsumu says through the door, “this was fun while it lasted.”

The dream—a twisted amalgamation of everyone Atsumu has known or ever will—disappears as Atsumu opens the door to perfect, quiet darkness. 

He steps through. 

* * *

For the first time in what seems like an eternity, Atsumu wakes himself up. He’s not sweating, not breathing hard—but there is an undercurrent of _something_ running through his veins. He lets his eyes stay closed for a long moment, exhaling softly. His knee jumps under the blanket.

“Atsumu.”

“Omi-kun?” Atsumu cracks an eye open and pushes himself up, running a hand through his hair. Sakusa is standing over the bed. The lights are already off. 

“Hi,” Sakusa says, and then, “move over.” 

Atsumu does not move over. His fingertips are buzzing. He feels alight with energy, like he could send a bolt of lightning right into the heart of cotton-candy Hirakata. He could probably rip a two-meter hole in the fabric of the universe with his bare hands if he tried right now. He cannot remember the last time he felt this alive. 

Fuck it. Atsumu is going to stage a revolution. He only bends to the whims of pretty boys on Tuesdays. Today is a Sunday night, and he is done courting denial. He sends the lightning bolt right down into the center of Sakusa’s mattress. “Kiyoomi.” 

Sakusa pauses with a fistful of blankets suspended in midair, eyes wide. He looks as though he has received a minor electric shock. 

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says again. 

Sakusa runs his tongue over his lower lip. “I—yeah. Yes.” 

Atsumu holds out his hand, palm up. Moonlight spills across his fingertips. There is probably a second nuclear Armageddon somewhere in the heart of Hirakata when Sakusa nudges him over to get into bed and takes Atsumu’s hand in his own.

“It’s over. I’m pretty sure it’s over.”

He looks sideways. Sakusa nods, his back pressed up against the headboard. Atsumu’s hand is a little warmer than his, and a little wider. 

“Good.”

Atsumu glances down at their clasped hands, stark against the deep blue of Sakusa’s blankets, and he feels exhausted, suddenly. He runs his thumb over the back of Sakusa’s knuckles. Sakusa makes a soft sound, his head tilting forward. 

“You gonna ask what happened?”

Sakusa sighs. “You’re going to tell me either way.”

“Maybe. I dunno.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Atsumu lets his head tilt toward Sakusa’s shoulder. Not resting against it, not yet, but it’s a close thing. “I told the stupid fuckin’ dream thing I was happy and then I walked through a door.”

Sakusa hums. “Are you?”

“Huh?”

“Happy. Are you happy.” 

“Oh.” He pauses. “Yeah, probably.”

“Probably,” Sakusa echoes. 

“Well, I guess that—” 

The words get stuck somewhere between Atsumu’s voice box and his lips and die there. He fidgets with the blankets instead. 

“If you have something to say, you should say it.”

Sakusa doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t look irritated, or disillusioned, or bored. He doesn’t look like he’s carrying the purity of a hundred universes on his back. He just looks like a person.

Atsumu takes a deep breath in, his lungs aching. “Have you ever been in love?”

Sakusa pauses. For a moment, he is frozen in time. Atsumu watches carefully as his expression rearranges.

“Yes,” he says eventually. “I think so.”

“And it was—normal.”

“Depends on what you mean by normal.” 

“Well.” Atsumu fidgets with a hangnail. “I hadn’t been properly in love with anyone until Kita-san, in my second year of high school. My old captain,” he adds, watching Sakusa’s mouth open and then close. “And the dreams, well, they sort of...happened. Sometimes. Never as intense as...as this.”

“Oh,” Sakusa says. Atsumu watches revelation bridge the gaps over his face.

“Kita-san said it wasn’t healthy to depend on him so heavily.” Another unasked question. Another free answer. “Been thinkin’ about that a lot lately.”

An ambulance siren goes off somewhere below them. 

“I’m happy,” Sakusa says. Atsumu would laugh if he didn’t sound so serious. “If I thought you were dependent, I would tell you so. If I was uncomfortable, I would tell you. If I wasn’t happy, I would tell you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

As if Atsumu couldn’t tell.

“So if you have something to say,” Sakusa repeats, softer, and his fingers tighten around Atsumu’s, “you should say it now.”

“Well.” Atsumu swallows. His stomach turns three dryer cycles and ascends into orbit. Sakusa is looking at him, really _looking_ at him, and Atsumu—god, Atsumu feels _seen._ “It depends, I guess. On—on what you say afterward.”

 _“Oh,”_ Sakusa says, more an intake of breath than anything else, and he squeezes Atsumu’s hand so hard it hurts. “Okay. Keep going.”

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says, and—oh, he can _feel_ the click of Sakusa’s throat when he swallows. He leans sideways again, just slightly, and his head falls gently on Sakusa’s shoulder. He smells like coconut. “Kiyoomi, I’m probably in love with you.” 

There is a moment of perfect, unbroken silence. The split second in between lightning and thunder. The split second of terror between reaching out and someone meeting you halfway. 

And then:

“The fuck do you mean, _probably?_ Why can you never make up your mind about the important things, why is it always _I don’t know_ or—”

“What the fuck, Omi-kun, that is _not_ how you’re supposed to respond to a confession—”

“Bullshit, no one says _probably_ when they—”

“When they what?” 

“Atsumu,” Sakusa says. His eyebrows are furrowed, but he’s still holding Atsumu’s hand even though it’s kind of sweaty. “Stupidly, unfortunately, I am in love with you, with no room for error.” He tilts his head, and his hair, loose from the shower, sweeps down around his eyes. He’s always been breathtaking, but it’s only now that Atsumu realizes the full extent of it. Of all of this. 

“Now. Notice how I didn’t say ‘probably.’”

“Well, fuck, Omi-kun, I love ya,” Atsumu says, wrinkling his nose. “That hit your ego any better?” 

“Much. Say it again.”

“Hell no. You had your chance and ya blew it.”

And then Sakusa throws his head back and _laughs,_ really laughs, and Atsumu’s heart is pounding and he can feel it in his ears and Sakusa’s still holding his hand—

“Kiyoomi,” he says breathlessly, “can I kiss you?”

* * *

There are glass shards on the bed, on the floor, in the sky. There are glass shards in Atsumu’s heart. Sakusa is still laughing when he leans in, his eyes crinkling at the edges and his stupid white teeth catching on his lower lip and his hair still half-dry and _holy shit,_ Sakusa is kissing him. Sakusa is kissing him in front of Hirakata and the moon and Kita’s gods, probably. Sakusa kisses like the world is on fire. He moves his hand up to the back of Atsumu’s neck and Atsumu lets his fall onto Sakusa’s chest and he never thought this would be his life at twenty-three, in love with a boy who thinks the world is out to get him, but here he is. Here he is on the precipice of a miracle. Months before the hand holding, or the pining, or the dreams, Atsumu had watched Sakusa fold his wrists backwards under a vaulted ceiling and decided that he would love him if no one else would. 

“Omi-kun,” he gasps, pulling away, “Omi-Omi, I really, really—”

“Yeah,” Sakusa breathes, “me too.”

* * *

Sakusa is already awake when Atsumu wakes up. He’s resting halfway against the headboard, slumped down so that his cheek rests against the top of Atsumu’s head. One of his arms is draped loosely around Atsumu’s bare shoulders, and the other rests lightly on Atsumu’s chest. 

“Mornin’,” Atsumu mumbles into Sakusa’s collarbone.

“Good morning.”

He still smells like coconut. Atsumu reaches up to brush the tips of Sakusa’s hair out of his face. 

“What did you dream about?” Sakusa’s voice is soft, morning-deep and absolutely devastating. It makes Atsumu want to climb an entire mountain and eat the clouds at the top. If that’s what it would take to make this image of Sakusa a permanent fixture in his life, he would do it. He would do it in a second, and do it all over again in the next one. 

“Nothing,” he says honestly. “You?”

Sakusa considers him. “I brought you to my mother’s garden. The hyacinths were in bloom.”

“Oh.” Oh. “That’s.”

Atsumu props his chin up against Sakusa’s chest. From there he can sort of see up Sakusa’s nose and under his bangs, and it’s not really an attractive angle, but Sakusa is attractive from nearly everywhere else. Maybe even here, actually. Atsumu can really see his eyes from here even though they’re half-closed. They’re not quite black— deep brown, rather. Deep, deep warmth.

“You’re pretty,” Atsumu says. “Omi-Omi. You’re really pretty.”

Sakusa wrinkles his nose. “I’m not a girl, Miya.” 

“Didn’t say you were. Just called ya pretty, _Kiyoomi.”_

Sakusa looks like he’s concentrating all of his effort into glaring. Atsumu reaches up and presses his index finger to Sakusa’s cheekbone. 

“I mean it, yanno.” He lets the rest of his fingers fall until he’s cupping Sakusa’s face in his hand. “You look—god, you _look—_ I dunno, have you ever even seen yourself? Fuck, Kiyoomi, you’re so pretty.” 

Sakusa flushes a blotchy red. Atsumu watches, fascinated, as he chews on his lower lip. His hands flutter up and down Atsumu’s sides like he’s not quite sure where to put them. He could put them fucking anywhere. Atsumu’s not picky.

“Atsumu,” Sakusa finally says, and it sounds like a concession. “I could take you. Someday. To see my mother’s garden.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes.”

Atsumu’s not stupid. He knows what Sakusa’s saying, what he’s asking. What he’s willing to give. 

“I’d love to,” he says. 

* * *

Atsumu officially returns to volleyball on the following Monday. The substitute setter levels him with a cool look when they lock eyes in the changing room, and Atsumu busies himself with adjusting his knee pads. 

“Wow, Tsum-Tsum, you’re here early!” Bokuto says, and Atsumu looks past him to see the telltale twitch of Sakusa’s lip. Sakusa Kiyoomi has a car, four alarms on his phone, and a tendency to push a little above the speed limit. He is usually the first to arrive. Today he was the second. 

“Got a ride,” he says. Sakusa pulls his shirt over his head and makes eye contact with Atsumu. Atsumu doesn’t look away. 

“That’s cool,” says Bokuto, who has not yet noticed that Atsumu isn’t paying full attention to him. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re back! It was really weird without you.”

“Aw, Bokkun, am I that irreplaceable?” He says, clapping a hand to his chest. He’s paying attention, now, and it’s _not_ out of narcissistic self-interest. His thumb snags on his zipper. “Ow, fuck.”

“Yes!” Bokuto beams. “I missed you and Shouyou missed you and even Sakusa missed you! Both of them were all mopey for the first couple of days. Sakusa even got subbed out for a bit last Thursday. Is your thumb okay?”

“Yeah, it just got caught on the—wait, I left early on Thursday, what d’ya mean he—”

“I did _not_ get subbed out on Thursday,” Sakusa says. He zips his jacket all the way up to his chin. The fabric bunches up around his shoulders. 

“Is your thumb okay,” Bokuto repeats. “Wait, no, Sakusa, you did get subbed out on Thursday, I remember it.”

“You must be remembering wrong.”

“No, I don’t think so!” 

Atsumu grins. “Omi-Omi-Omi-Omi-Omi—”

“Shut up.”

“Didja miss me?”

“Miya. Don’t you have to talk to Foster.”

“Oh, so now it’s only Atsumu in— _hey!”_

“What?” Bokuto frowns, watching as Sakusa reaches out to smack Atsumu on the shoulder.

“Nothing,” Sakusa says, and he catches Atsumu by the sleeve. _“Atsumu_ is going to talk to Coach Foster. We’ll see you later.”

But Sakusa drags him to the bathroom instead. He pushes his sleeves up and pumps the soap dispenser three times and waves his hands under the automatic faucet until it turns on.

“What,” Atsumu says.

“Something on my locker.”

“Oh.”

Sakusa scrubs for twenty seconds. Atsumu leans against the counter. Sakusa had almost kissed him in this same bathroom a few days ago. He wonders if he should try again.

The tap shuts off. Sakusa dries his hands. Atsumu stares at the tips of his shoes.

“Atsumu.”

His head jerks up. Sakusa’s personal marionette, at attention. 

Sakusa sighs. “I didn’t—there was nothing on my locker.”

“Yeah?” Atsumu raises an eyebrow. “Why’re we here, then?”

Sakusa runs his tongue over his lower lip. “I—the other day, we—” He looks simultaneously anxious and resigned. “I want a do-over.”

“You could’ve just _said_ so.” 

“Fuck off.”

“Do you want to kiss me or not?” 

“I—fuck you, what do you _think—”_

“I’m thinkin’ it’s pretty convenient that I’m just standing here lookin’ pretty—”

_“Atsumu.”_

Sakusa steps up to Atsumu, lets his right leg rest in between both of Atsumu’s own. His eyebrows are furrowed and his lips are pursed like he’s trying to hold back a smile. The strip lights hum in tandem above them as Sakusa’s breath hits Atsumu’s lips. Fuck. Atsumu loves him. 

“I’m going to kiss you,” Sakusa says, with all the determination of an imperial army, and Atsumu nods wordlessly. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When you look up, the sky turns over. Blue runs liquid through your fingers. The horizon stretches to fit your gaze. You are Dream-Omi, and you do not exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year!! wow. okay. it's finally over. the third chapter of this fic has been breathing down my neck for the past two months as i anxiously wrote and rewrote it...i'm just glad i managed to finish it. this fic was basically “i don't wanna be horny anymore i just wanna be happy” and i think it's pretty sexy of atsumu to end up happy because He Deserves It
> 
> so funny story, i started drafting this in like july and after i hit a thousand words i thought to myself "haha imagine if i actually finished writing this though it would be like seventeen thousand words" and here we are now with just over seventeen thousand words. i'm not saying i can predict the future, but i can definitely predict the future.
> 
> i'm sorry this took so long. i don't know why this was so difficult to write but it really, really was. a big thank-you to the people who've stuck by it anyway, you deserve a massive fucking medal for putting up with my bullshit time and time again
> 
> okay!! thanks for reading. comments/kudos/decaffeinated tea are all unneccessary but equally appreciated. stay safe


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